Warner pushed himself upright with the assistance of his rifle. “Yeah, that sucks.”
“Better than being dead like these Raggers.”
The three men exited the shuttle into the gusting wind. Conway gritted his teeth, wishing he was away from Glesia. A couple of minutes later, they joined the others.
“Let’s find a way inside,” said Conway, indicating the dark form of the structure nearby.
Once again, Lockhart and Rembra set a watch, while Conway and three others checked out the interior of the building. The wind wasn’t so strong inside the walls and the airborne fragments of ice were cut by about eighty percent. Still, it was difficult to search efficiently given the piles of debris. There were plenty of Raggers and Conway didn’t pay them much attention. In his mind, it was a good thing for them to be vulnerable to the death pulse.
At the north wall, Conway found what he was looking for. The overhang he’d spotted earlier was in fact an inner structure made from heavily braced dark alloy. It had suffered from the missile strikes against the outer walls but was intact. Beneath the overhang was a tall, wide door, made from the same metal. It was flat, unmarked and stared sullenly at Conway.
“Is there an access panel?” asked Hacher, stepping forward for a closer look.
Conway looked too. “No sign of one.”
“Where does this go?” asked Kemp.
“It’s a lift. I guess that means it goes the way we want to go.”
“All the way to Shit Town.”
Conway walked left. The frame into which the door was fitted was clad in alloy sheets, which formed a shaft about three meters to each side, with the back fixed to the external wall of the building. The left-hand wall didn’t have an access panel and neither did the right-hand one.
“How the hell do we get inside?” Conway wondered.
“It’s not too thick,” said Private Lester, tapping the surface of the door with his knuckles. “Want me to blow it open?”
“Not yet,” said Conway. “Having access to the shaft won’t help us if the car is way down at the bottom.”
“That’s only details, sir,” said Lester cheerfully.
The door had Conway stumped. It disappeared into the frame and he could see no apparent way to force it open other than using explosives. He thumped it with his fist for the sake of it.
“Dammit,” he grunted.
In anger, he thumped it again. This time, he noticed something flicker and vanish on his HUD. Conway placed his hand on the door and slid it first left and then right. The HUD indicator reappeared and stayed on.
“I’ve got a link to an access panel somewhere behind the door,” he said.
“That is good,” said Rembra. “Your suit codes should open it.”
“Let’s give it a try,” said Conway.
He motioned for the others nearby to cover the door. The soldiers dropped back and crouched behind the nearby stone blocks, their rifles trained towards the lift. Conway stood as far to the side as he could while still maintaining his link to the concealed access panel. The software connected, the codebreaker ran for two seconds and then stopped, reporting both an error and a successful completion. Conway didn’t know what that meant, so he ignored it and ran a second program which was designed to open a door where the security was already disabled.
The door opened and Conway got himself quickly out of sight.
“Clear,” said Kemp.
Conway stepped towards the opening and looked inside. He saw no surprises – the interior of the lift was metal-lined and square like the shaft.
“No control panel,” he said.
“It must be hidden,” said Rembra.
Conway didn’t want to call in the soldiers until he had somewhere for them to go. “I’ll check it out,” he said.
With that, Conway stepped into the lift. The floorplate was thick and gave off no sound. He guessed at the likeliest place for a hidden panel and planted his hand on the right-hand wall nearest to the door. The HUD indicator didn’t appear. He cursed and strode to the left-hand wall.
Without warning, the lift door closed, leaving Conway in a darkness that was absolute.
“Sir, the door closed,” said Kemp on the comms.
“No shit.”
“I take it from that you’re still alive.”
“And kicking.”
A moment after Conway spoke the words, the air began to throb with energy and his first thought was that the death pulse was coming again. He detected a scent that reminded him of the sharp discharge odor of a tharniol-coated round, all chemical and metallic. He readied himself for the pain. The vibration in the air passed after ten or fifteen seconds and rather than leaving Conway with lingering pain, he felt a hangover of lethargy which was unpleasant but not debilitating.
He swore and got on the comms. Nobody was answering and the receptors were grey. Conway swore again. Instead of persisting with the comms, he hunted for the access panel which got the lift open in the first place. It was easily found and concealed somewhere in the wall close to the door. The panel accepted his command to open and the door slid aside.
What Conway discovered was not at all what he expected.
Chapter Nine
Conway found himself looking into a room instead of the ruins of the surface building. This room had an atmosphere moderately high in oxygen, whilst not enough to support life. It was ten meters square and lined with grey panels. The ceiling was low at two meters and covered in the same sheets as the walls.
The place was lit by fist-sized spheres embedded in the ceiling, but the illumination was so muted that it might as well have not existed at all. A pall hung in the air, like gathered shadows. Conway sensed a heavy oppressiveness that his combat suit was unable to shield him from and pressure built steadily behind his eyes.
Three exits led from the room. He stared into the passage opposite, but the gloom conspired against the technology in his helmet sensor and defeated it. The lights continued into the corridor, yet they were reduced to pinpoints of white-grey that betrayed nothing of their surroundings. Anything further than fifteen meters was utterly swallowed by darkness.
Warily, he turned on his helmet torch. The darkness seemed to absorb the powerful beam and the range of his visibility didn’t increase at all. He turned it off and focused on the other details.
To Conway’s left, a little way inside the room, a pile of Raggers – maybe fifteen or twenty in total - lay frozen both by death and the freezing temperatures. Their guns hadn’t saved them from the death pulse, nor had their stealth suits.
Conway had instinct and everything about this felt wrong. The darkness seemed to act as a shroud for an unknown threat. He felt as though something was gleefully watching him, just out of sight and waiting for a chance to strike. Fear came and it took an enormous effort to stay on top of it. Conway lifted his rifle – the only comfort he had – and trained it into the room.
He tested the comms again, without much hope. The receptors were grey, without even a flicker of green. If the mission objective was somewhere here, Conway knew it was going to be a tough ask for him and his squad.
He hadn’t taken a step from what he no longer believed was a mere lift. Without giving the matter extensive thought, Conway suspected he’d been transported from the surface by similar technology to that which he’d encountered on Qali-5. Since he didn’t want to be separated from his squad, Conway checked for the access panel, found it and sent the command to close the door. After a short delay, the door obliged. Conway waited.
A full minute later, he conceded that he was doing something wrong. The throbbing vibration didn’t return, even though he attempted to repeat the exact same movements he’d made to activate the transport earlier. He spent another minute searching for a control panel, aware that he hadn’t been thorough before. His hunt turned up blank – the only piece of tech his combat suit would link to was the access panel and that only seemed to open and close the door.
Ang
rily, Conway commanded the door to open. He retained a slight hope that the transporter would have activated without him realizing it. His hopes came to nothing and once more, Conway stared into the room with its pile of Raggers and its sense of impending death.
Having tried one method, Conway tried another. He stepped out of the transporter, in case it was fitted with a built-in failsafe that prevented it carrying the same passenger back to their origin point unless that passenger exited and then went back inside. A few seconds after he stepped out, the door closed, leading Conway to believe he might have cracked the method. He waited a few seconds and then extended an arm towards the hidden access panel, all the while keeping his attention on the room. The pressure in his skull had returned the moment he exited the teleporter and he thought it might be increasing.
Conway’s suit computer ordered the door to open. The software reported an unrecognized failure and nothing happened. With a grimace, Conway sent the command for a second time. Once again, the door remained shut.
The pressure in his head grew and he sensed a presence in the darkness of the passage opposite. One of the pinpoint lights went out and reappeared again. Conway thought he detected a whispering sound at the extent of hearing and he turned up the sensitivity of his helmet microphone. The whispering didn’t get louder but it stayed in his head. There was no mistaking the malevolence and Conway felt his mental strength eroding.
He attempted to open the teleport door again with no more success than the previous effort. The pressure was tremendous and it took an enormous amount of willpower for Conway to convince his body that everything was just fine. His eyes strayed to the magazine readout on his gun.
The movement came once more and no matter how hard he stared, Conway was unable to be certain what it was. He was much too experienced to pretend it was his imagination. Something was out there. Without moving his head more than a few inches, Conway glanced towards the left and right passages. The angle prevented him from seeing far along either.
A shape detached itself from the darkness of the left-hand tunnel. It seemed to flow across the floor - a blur of limbs with a hulking body. Conway opened up with his rifle. The Gilner spat out a dozen tharniol-coated high-impact rounds, which ripped into the creature. It was too dark for Conway to see the wounds, but the onrushing shadow tumbled over and over, coming to a rest a few meters from his position.
A sense of other movement made Conway turn towards the center passage. Another of the creatures – Sekar – hurtled towards him. This one was big like the first and just as fast. On it came, the only sound that of its claws scraping and clicking against the floor plate.
Now that his opponents had shown themselves, Conway’s battle calm settled upon him and he fired with greater control. Six shots were enough to bring this one down and the Sekar’s momentum sent it crashing into the pile of Raggers, knocking their bodies flying. Conway stepped aside, with the reverberating cracks of the gunfire still echoing in his ears. He turned his head left and right in the hunt for more of these enemies. Everything was still, though Conway’s instinct alarms told him he wasn’t safe.
He took a hand from his rifle, intending to swap magazines. No sooner had he done so, than a third and fourth Sekar burst from the opposite tunnel. They came too fast for Conway to reload and he shot them. The readout on the magazine fell, though he didn’t need to look to know he was burning through his ammunition. The two Sekar went down and two more appeared from the passage opposite. From the right, Conway sensed others, not yet committing themselves, but waiting.
More aliens came from the left – so many they appeared like a huge amorphous mass of muscular limbs and sharp claws. Conway fired two bullets at a time, hoping he could somehow get through this. In the confusion, he couldn’t be sure if two direct hits were enough to score a kill.
Conway’s gun hit empty. He ejected the magazine and let it fall. His hand went into the drop bag at his waist and his fingers wrapped around the hard edges of a full magazine. He was going to be too late – much too late. The Sekar seemed to run faster the closer they came and the room was filled with their hungering forms.
“Get down, sir.”
A cacophony of gunfire started long before gravity brought Conway to the floor. The sound of it was everywhere and he sensed the disturbances in the air as the projectiles skimmed to either side of his falling body. For a split second, it was only the flat sound of Gilner fire. Then, a Fangrin chain gun started up and all hell broke loose. The weapon roared like a wild beast and the Sekar were cut to pieces.
Conway stayed down and dragged out a magazine. Tharniol bullets punched clean through the aliens, mowing them down as they charged towards the transport door. A dense, writhing form struck Conway and he twisted to push it away. A pitch-black limb, with a taloned hand, hit the floor nearby, producing a screech from the alloy plates. Conway kicked out violently and the sole of his boot struck the Sekar. The creature was somehow yielding and solid at the same time. With a slam of his palm, he got the full magazine into his gun.
Abruptly, the gunfire stopped and everything fell completely and utterly silent. The moment didn’t last and a voice, spoken through a chin speaker, shattered the calm.
“Well shit,” said Private Torres, changing her magazine for a full one. “More of these Sekar bastards.”
A hand reached down and Conway took it. Sergeant Lockhart hauled him to his feet with a grunt of effort.
“Welcome to the job,” said Conway, looking around at the carnage. “Good timing – thanks.”
“No problem, sir,” said Private Kemp. “Got a lot of pressure in my head.”
“Me too,” said Conway. The Sekar were dead, but the pain hadn’t gone away.
During this short conversation, Lieutenant Rembra ordered the rest of the squad towards the exit passages in order to keep watch. Conway didn’t need to do a count to see that everyone had come through the transporter at the same time. The soldiers didn’t like where they’d arrived and the comms was busy with oaths until Rembra ordered everyone to shut the hell up.
The room was hardly secured when the second death pulse came. It was the same as the first – a rapid buildup of bass pressure and then a release. When it finished, Conway was left with similar physical symptoms to the ones he’d experienced on the surface shuttle. He clenched his teeth and growled in anger.
Shaking his head to clear it, Conway strode away from the teleporter door and stopped to check on Private Warner, who’d stumbled and dropped to one knee.
“I’m good, sir.”
“Up,” Conway ordered, giving Warner some assistance.
The next couple of minutes were spent making sure everyone was ready to proceed. The death pulse was bad like a punch in the guts, but it hadn’t killed anyone yet. In fact, Conway’s headache had completely cleared and he felt better than he did before the pulse.
“Anyone note the interval?” asked Corporal Freeman.
“Eighteen minutes,” said Conway. “I don’t know if it’s consistent.”
One of the Sekar lay nearby and he couldn’t help himself from staring at it for long moments. This one looked different to those from the facility on Qali-5. It was more animal than humanoid – like a broad-shouldered dog that was bigger than any normal dog. It had the same claws that Conway remembered from his previous encounter. Even when dead the Sekar looked dangerous.
Another couple of the aliens were nearby and these were much closer in appearance to the ones from Qali-5.
“I wonder how many different types they’ve got,” said Lockhart, inspecting a different corpse.
“As long as they die to a bullet.”
“Yeah.”
“We should get moving,” said Lieutenant Rembra, a heat haze visible around the barrels of his chain gun. “The mission documentation states we will find what we seek on one of the lower levels.”
“I don’t see any signposts, Lieutenant,” said Kemp.
“We will look for them.”
“Hey Kemp, there’s a sign on your forehead,” said Private Warner. “It says ass.”
“Ha ha, screw you, Chucky.”
Conway wanted to get on with the mission, but not before he’d figured out how they were going to escape from here when the time came.
“Anyone understand this thing?” he asked, indicting the teleporter with the end of his rifle.
“Yeah, a teleporter,” said Kemp, as if that answered the question. “It was cool.”
“Shut up, Kemp,” said Torres, giving him a knock with her elbow.
“When you vanished, we entered the cubicle and waited,” said Rembra, talking directly to Conway. “For a time, nothing happened and then we were transported here.”
“I tried to come back, but it wouldn’t activate,” mused Conway.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Freeman, always ready to put forward a guess. “If both parts of the teleporter are occupied at the same time, maybe it doesn’t work. In case everything gets mixed up or something and passengers come out with two heads and six arms.”
“We might have to get out of here quickly. That means no time for experimentation later.”
“Are you looking for volunteers, sir?” asked Freeman.
“I’ll do it,” said Kemp.
“Let’s both try,” Conway replied. “Two guns are better than one.”
“Yeah.”
The two men entered the teleporter and the door closed behind them. The vibration started a short time afterwards and when the door opened again, they were looking out into the rubble of the surface building. Conway stepped outside, sent a comms update to the Broadsword and then returned to the cubicle. Less than a minute later, they re-joined the others on what they assumed were the sub-surface levels of the facility.
“All good?” asked Lockhart.
“Seems to be. We can get back to the surface.”
With an escape route in place, Conway turned his attention to the mission. The details were sketchy – explore, find, steal, escape – but he’d come to terms with that already. He got himself oriented. The passage opposite the teleporter headed approximately north.
Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5) Page 8