For a moment, Conway felt as though he were suspended in time. His thoughts churned, but his body was frozen and he believed he might be paralyzed. Then, his vision went blank.
Chapter Sixteen
When his sight cleared, Conway found himself somewhere different. He was lying on a surface that was lumpy and uneven. He raised his head and realized with disgust where he was – on a mound of dead Raggers. The corpses were dressed in grey personnel suits and sucked dry like the others. One of his hands had a tight grip on a solid object, which Conway didn’t need to inspect to realize it was his Gilner. He tugged it out from underneath one of the aliens.
With a thumping in his skull that reminded him of the last time he’d drank far too much beer, Conway got his knees under him. He heard Ragger bones snap and crackle, like they’d been made brittle by whatever process had killed the constituent members of the heap. The pile of aliens was extensive – maybe fifteen meters across - and he guessed he was six or seven feet above the floor in a large room which contained crates, lockers and a single exit. The ever-present red light of the alarm filled the rest of the space.
A few feet away, two figures erupted from beneath the surface, sending featherlight corpses tumbling. It was Kemp and Torres, neither of them in a good frame of mind.
“What the hell?” yelled Kemp on the squad channel.
“This is totally screwed up!” said Torres, no less angry.
“Quiet!” ordered Conway. The situation was crazy and he had no idea what was going on, but facts were facts – they weren’t in the pillar room, so the only option was to accept that and deal with it.
“He had his hand on my ass, sir!”
“That’s how I landed!” protested Kemp. “It’s not my fault.”
Conway counted slowly down from three in his mind. Unbelievably, Torres didn’t care that she’d been dumped in a pile of Ragger corpses, only that Kemp’s hand ended up on her ass.
“You two need to go on a date when we get out of here. That’s an order.”
“You can’t order that, sir!” protested Torres.
“I can and I did. Now be quiet like I asked!” Conway exited the squad channel before the inevitable argument began. “Who else is here?” he asked, using the chin speaker.
Rembra came out of the pile with a surge that suggested he’d woken with a shock from an unconscious state. The Fangrin snarled angrily and hauled his chain gun out after him. Corporal Freeman, Lieutenant Park and Governor Wrekstin emerged seconds later, the latter looking even more worn down than he had in the cell.
“Everyone who was in the pillar room,” said Freeman. “We left the others behind.”
“Transport hub,” said Lieutenant Park. “The Raggers are experimenting with teleportation.”
“Like instant travel from one place to another?” asked Kemp. “Cool. No more lightspeed transitions.”
“I believe the Raggers were having problems,” said Wrekstin.
“Like what?” asked Torres.
“It is not a conversation to have whilst standing on the dead,” said the Fangrin. With that, he clumsily waded across the carpet of Raggers. Every footstep sunk deep into the pile and produced a variety of crunching sounds. Conway found himself watching in fascination. He knew he should feel shock or some other extreme emotion at what had just happened. Instead, he gratefully accepted that he was alive and with a chance to maintain his condition.
They followed Governor Wrekstin to the floor. All except Kemp who stayed put until two dozen Ragger corpses materialized around him and fell onto the heap. At that moment, he decided it would be better if his feet were on the floor like everyone else’s.
“That pressure build-up is gone,” he said, acting like none of it mattered to him.
“Yeah,” said Conway. He ushered everyone over towards one of the chest-high crates which would offer protection from a Ragger attack coming through the door. The crate looked ancient and pieces flaked off its surface like it had been down here forever. He glanced at the cabinets and noticed they weren’t in much of a better state.
He scanned the comms receptors to find a green. He had no luck, so turned his attention to the people who’d come with him from the pillar room. “Is someone going tell me what the hell is going on?”
“As you have been told - teleportation,” said Governor Wrekstin. “The Raggers were tapping into the power of those tharniol cylinders in order to move an object from one place to another. Something has gone wrong and transport nodes are appearing. I suspect their creation is random.”
“Is that what’s killing these Raggers and turning them into husks?”
Wrekstin hesitated. “No. Something else is the cause.”
“Anything you know, I need to know as well, Governor.”
“I require more information. Perhaps we will find another console once we leave this room.”
“My primary concern is escape, not hunting for intel,” said Conway. “The comms boosters in my suit won’t reach the surface, which means we’re probably way below ground.” He remembered the lift control panel which showed twenty subterranean levels in the facility. “We should find a lift and join the others.”
“This facility must be destroyed,” said Wrekstin firmly.
“That’s going to happen whether or not we escape, Governor and I doubt Admiral Kolb will be in a mood to wait around before doing it.”
“It can’t be left to chance.”
“What did you find on that console, Governor?” asked Lieutenant Park.
“The failures began prior to the arrival of Attack Fleet 2. I believe the Raggers left this facility two or three weeks ago.”
“That ties in with what Corporal Freeman discovered on one of the upper levels. No mainframe logons for the last two weeks.”
“I found reports of anomalies in the console,” Wrekstin continued. “It was enough to make the Raggers abandon an operation as big as this one.”
“Yet they couldn’t shut off the power and close the place down completely,” said Park, even more troubled.
“Which does not bode well for us.”
“How come?” asked Kemp, not shy when it came to asking questions. “Won’t we just finish nuking the surface and fly off home leaving every surviving Ragger wishing they’d never started a fight they’re about to lose?”
“The facility is unstable,” said Wrekstin. “If it is not destroyed soon, the consequences could be terrible.”
“What sort of consequences?” asked Conway.
“When you start interfering with things you don’t fully understand, the outcome is unlikely to be positive, Lieutenant Conway. Especially if you are tapping into a semi-understood substance like tharniol.” Wrekstin didn’t break gaze. “And if our fleets simply obliterate the surface with nuclear warheads, the deepest levels of this facility may remain operational.”
“I get the message. If we don’t get out and warn our spaceships to properly destroy this place, some of this kit down here goes bigtime boom.”
“Perhaps worse than boom, Lieutenant. We should exit this room and search for a way to the surface. Once we establish a comms link, I can instruct our warships to inflict a sustained barrage on this facility in the hope it is enough.”
That was a plan which Conway could understand. He headed for the exit door, just as another bunch of Raggers appeared a few feet above the pile and dropped on top of the other corpses. The door access panel light was red and Rembra leaned over to disable the security.
“Fingers crossed is what you humans say,” he rumbled. Rembra’s suit computer successfully removed the security lock and he made a huffing sound. “That is a relief.”
“Damn right.”
Conway got his rifle up and waited for Rembra to open the door.
“I believe I could put my fist through this,” said the Fangrin, pulling his hand away from the panel. He scraped his fingertips along the door’s metal surface and dislodged thousands of fine particles.
In spite of his words, Rembra didn’t try to punch a hole in the door and he touched the security panel instead. The door slid open, producing a mist of powder and allowing access to an eight-meter-wide, red-lit corridor with a high ceiling.
Conway looked outside. The rock walls were clad in sheets of alloy. Every few meters, sturdy posts supported beams, which in turn held up the ceiling. In both directions, the passage curved until it was lost from sight. Ragger operatives dressed in grey suits of varying hues lay everywhere.
“There’s a possibility this passage rings a central area,” said Conway. “And we’ve got more dead Raggers – lots more.”
He watched for another few moments and then conceded that none of the fallen Raggers were merely pretending to be dead. With a sense of trepidation, Conway stepped into the corridor. The air was warm and still. It was deathly quiet and then, he heard a distant sound which put him in mind of an explosion whilst not being exactly the same. It was too muffled for him to be certain exactly what it was or where it came from.
“This place is falling apart,” said Kemp, rubbing one of the support posts with his palm and watching the decayed flakes of alloy scatter on the floor.
“What the hell caused this, sir?” asked Torres, tapping one of the wall sheets with the barrel of her rifle. It made a dull sound and produced more fragments. “The Raggers either built this part of the facility a bajillion years ago or they got a faulty batch of panels from the factory.”
“Or they had an accident and everything down here got damaged,” said Freeman.
Conway was initially wary of the ceiling supports, but when he knocked one with the stock of his gun, it sounded solid enough. Not that they had much choice in where to go anyway, but it made him feel marginally better about the situation.
He stepped away from the support post and tried to get a feel for which way to go. In neither direction could he see signage, though plenty of doors were visible. “Let’s go this way,” he said, turning left.
Conway set off, taking care not to trample on any of the Raggers. The aliens were everywhere and he guessed there would be hundreds in this corridor alone.
“Empty eye sockets give me the creeps,” said Torres.
“You have a specific thing about empty eye sockets?” asked Kemp.
“Empty eye sockets and clowns.”
“For me it’s moldy cheese.”
Conway let them talk. It was on the squad channel and wasn’t interfering with his thoughts. He stared ahead – the doors were evenly spaced, all in the right-hand wall. The lift access panels were almost identical to those controlling the doors, which made it impossible to distinguish between the two from afar.
He cursed inwardly and picked up the pace. In reality, he wanted to sprint, but this was hostile territory and Conway didn’t want his squad getting shot to pieces because he got scared and forgot about discipline. A dark part of his mind taunted him about the dead Raggers, telling him that whatever had happened here it could happen again.
“As soon as we find a lift, we’re taking it, Governor,” he said. “No delays.”
Wrekstin grunted and didn’t confirm his acceptance. Conway had a sense that the Fangrin was going to play stubborn if he got the opportunity to tinker with a piece of juicy-looking Ragger hardware. He had no doubt the enemy kept all kinds of interesting secrets down here about which Conway was definitely curious, but on balance, he was happy to remain ignorant and for Captain Griffin or someone else to launch a dozen high-yield nukes into the place.
“We really should take a look,” said Lieutenant Park quietly. “This is the only chance we’ll get.”
“Is that the scientist or the realist talking?” said Conway, not taking his eyes off the corridor ahead.
“A bit of both.”
Conway shook his head, angry but also resigned. “You’re crazy – both you and Governor Wrekstin. On the one hand, we needed to nuke the place yesterday, on the other you want to spend a couple of hours sightseeing.”
“Fleet Admiral Stone is a loyal man.”
“You think he’ll block any attempts to destroy this place until we’re out?” asked Conway, feeling a glimmer of hope.
“He might. If he escapes with the others. And if he believes we’re alive.”
“I’m surprised we’re not dead yet,” Conway admitted. “The fleet was under pressure and I doubt Admiral Kolb will risk everything to stick around when the mission is already a success.”
“You don’t know that, Lieutenant.” Park smiled. “Maybe we overcame the enemy defenses and have the luxury of additional time.”
“For some reason I never considered that. The ULAF’s always been on the receiving end, where every mission requires a rapid withdrawal, even the successful ones.”
“Times change.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
A passage in the right-hand wall, previously hidden from sight by the ceiling supports came into view. Conway strode towards it and arrived first. The new passage was as large as the main one and it ended at a set of flaking double doors twenty meters away. Indistinct Ragger script on the doors had a simple message. Core. Access Forbidden.
“We must look inside,” said Governor Wrekstin.
The words were no surprise at all and Conway felt obliged to point out the obvious.
“If we die, the facility might be left intact.”
“One must take risks to achieve victory. I overheard Lieutenant Park’s words – circumstances on and above the surface may have changed. We should seize this opportunity.”
“I don’t agree.”
“We are here and we are going to see what’s within this core.”
“You have no protection against whatever crap is in the air.”
“I have spent long enough in here that my death is likely, whatever we find through those doors.” Wrekstin bared his teeth in what looked like a grin. It was a Fangrin expression with nuances that Conway hadn’t yet figured out.
Every soldier learned quickly when it was time to accept the inevitable. This was one of those times. Governor Wrekstin – with the assistance of Rembra - was going to do this, no matter what Conway said, and he could either abandon them or do what allies were meant to do for each other.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Seventeen
Conway and Rembra approached the double doors, leaving the others sheltering behind one of the supports in the main corridor, so they weren’t easily seen if any living Raggers were left in the core area. The Fangrin padded ahead with his chain gun held steady at firing height. The weapon’s motor whined softly and the barrels turned slowly.
“Ready?” said Rembra, his eyes unblinking.
“Yes.”
Whatever else was wrong in this facility, the backup power supply was functioning properly and the doors opened smoothly, hardly disturbing any of the loose particles on the surface. Conway noted the alloy was about a meter thick, though he wasn’t able to tell how deep the corrosion went. Beyond lay a short corridor and a second set of doors.
The two of them advanced and Rembra disabled the second security lock. He waited for Conway to give the order.
“Go on.”
The second doors opened, revealing a hemispherical space that was lit in a white so dim it appeared more like a grey. It was enough for Conway to get a ping off the far wall and determine that it was three hundred meters from the door. The center of the space was dominated by a dark grey raised dais, five meters high and with a diameter of almost two hundred. Several sets of steps led to the top.
The entire dais was surrounded at floor level by Ragger tech. It wasn’t all consoles and came in different shapes and sizes. Conway guessed some of it was monitoring kit, though he didn’t know for sure. The chamber was warm and the air carried a gentle, persistent vibration.
“The platform is made from solid tharniol,” said Rembra. “I wonder at its purpose.”
“Let Governor Wrekstin wo
rry about that,” Conway replied. “There’re no more toxins in here than anywhere else in this facility.”
With that, he turned and exited the central chamber. Both sets of doors had closed automatically but they responded when Conway touched the access panels. Outside, the group was right where he’d left them.
“It’s clear,” he said.
Conway led them inside. Kemp made a couple of wiseass comments to make it clear that nothing in the chamber impressed him. Nobody was listening except Torres, who gave Kemp a nudge with her elbow to let him know it was time to shut up.
“I must look at this equipment,” said Wrekstin.
Lieutenant Park was just as interested, though she didn’t say it out loud. Corporal Freeman hadn’t said much before now and he asked if he could go looking himself.
“We’ll all go,” said Conway. “I don’t want you touching anything.”
“What could possibly go wrong, sir?”
“I don’t want to think too hard about it, Corporal,” said Conway with a sudden laugh. “You’ve got a good track record, but now’s the time to stand back and watch. That way nobody can blame you.”
The group was halfway to the dais, when a spaceship appeared in the air directly above the platform with a thump of displaced air. The craft didn’t fall. Instead, it hovered exactly where it had arrived, 190 meters of weapons and armor, with the grumbling of its engines filling the room. The group stopped as one and stared.
“Doesn’t look much like a Ragger spaceship,” said Conway, failing to detect any similarities between this one and others he’d seen before.
“Teleported here from elsewhere,” said Wrekstin.
Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4) Page 13