“Nothin’ much,” Zero answered, “just hold there for a while in case somethin’ takes a peek out, alright?” Brandt understood.
If a marksman could ever be rushed, were they even a marksman at all?
Patience, which she felt that she had, meant a whole different thing to Zero; like the parameters were so vastly opposite that there should be another word for what he called patience. She could bide her time better than most, but she doubted she had the mental and physical discipline to remain awake and in position, looking down the scope of a rifle for three days, just for a fifteen-second window of opportunity to take a shot and make it count.
They waited. Brandt expected Paterson, the civilian of their downed crew in most ways, to show impatience or annoyance at wasting the daylight, but he remained still and focused to remind her that he still had the heart of a soldier. Something about her train of thought bothered her and made her go back over the word in her head until she found what was wrong.
Wasting the daylight.
“Anyone else notice,” she asked softly and quietly over the team channel, “that the sun seems to be setting again already?” Silence reigned until the aggressive sulk of Horne’s voice came back to her.
“So? It’s a faster day rotation on this rock than you’re used to. Scared of the dark, Commander?”
Brandt sighed. “Ordinarily, Mister Horne, I am not. But if a massive pack of giant carnivorous scorpion-crab-whatevers wanted to be underground and off the surface during the dark, does that give you any indication of where we should be?” Horne didn’t answer, but the conversation sank deeply into their minds.
“Okay,” Zero said in the same controlled, implacable voice he always used when the customized rifle was in his hands for real, “nothin’ doin’. I’ll cover your approach from this angle, but be advised that I do not have eyeball on the right side perimeter of the compound from my position. Acknowledge.”
“Understood,” Brandt said back just as softly, “moving now.” She turned to look at Specter and Paterson, both about three meters apart and the same distance away from her. With her left hand moving in small, slow gestures, she ordered Specter to take point and Paterson to get on his ass and stay there. She finished by explaining that she would cover the rear of their approach. Specter nodded, drawing just the left pistol from that thigh and keeping his right hand free for any number of eventualities nobody wanted to think of in too much detail. Paterson, unencumbered of the heavy support gun which was back in the hands of Payne at the fallback position far behind them, tucked the submachine gun similar to Brandt’s into his shoulder and adopted a tactical look as he followed. The compact weapon looked tiny in his hands, even compared to Brandt, who seemed just the right size to carry such a gun, but she knew the devastating firepower contained in that small package. The thought of his weapon made her glance down at her own for the hundredth time and check it; a nervous habit she had often been pulled up on. She had hoped for an alien energy weapon when they came back to the new and hostile system, but their technological advances in a such a short time had limited them to ship and mech-borne energy weapons; they simply couldn’t make the tech small enough in the time they had.
Her submachine gun, initially a Hyper prototype and much like Zero’s 12mm marksman rifle and Specter’s custom heavy pistols, was unique to her. It had taken her a while to grow fully accustomed to carrying such a small gun, missing the reassurance of the heavier Universal Service Rifle she had eaten and slept with during her basic training with the same two men she was now advancing behind. But when she came to trust that the punch delivered by the lightweight gun was far superior to even the old squad support weapons, she had embraced it. Now it was modified, overpowered, and tweaked to be perfect for her, she flicked the safety on and off to reassure herself that it was as ready to rock and roll as she was.
She glanced down at the action when she did it, seeing the custom etchings created by the old Teutonic armorer onboard the Ichi on the weapon housing switch from, “NO BANG,” to, “BIG BANG” on a sliding scale of how much singularity power was added to the charged projectile. She smirked, reassured by the joke covering the very serious nature of the controls.
“Perimeter fence,” Specter’s voice said, “damaged.” Brandt didn’t respond verbally, instead she had the patience to wait until her own controlled advance met the obstacle. She found a heavy mesh fence, three times her height, that was thick and tough but had a degree of flex to it. She knew that would make it harder to break though, as any attack on it would have the force distributed and dissipated by the give in the metal. She followed the obstruction to where Specter waited, seeing a ragged hole about the height of him, where the edges of the metal were roughly mangled, and her HUD registered a chunk of something hanging from a jagged edge.
“Biological material,” Paterson said helpfully, “been there a while by the looks of it.”
“Take a sample,” she told him, waiting for an expected complaint about his field of science having nothing to do with taking biological samples. To her surprise he just took out a pack from a utility pouch on his armor and bagged the chunk of leathery flesh with only a single, mild complaint.
“Ew,” he whispered to himself, transmitting to the entire squad.
“Move inside,” she instructed after he was ready again, seeing Specter move through the gap with exquisite body control and without touching the edges. They filed in after the cyborg, who had advanced and gone static to survey and support, should the need arise, and their progress brought the low building which had been covered by the small tree canopy fully into view.
“Pheeeeeew,” Paterson whistled softly in awe. Few of them had ever seen an alien construction up close and his excitement was obvious. Brandt’s was less so, as having fought their enemy under the shadow of two Va’alen ships, she recognized the style as being the same.
“Everybody stay sharp,” she said softly with the tone of a knife blade being drawn slowly across a sharpening tool, “this had to have been built by the Va’alen, given how similar it looks to the material of their ships.” She could almost feel the air over the channel grow cold and still as they realized the potential danger. Brandt caught Specter’s eye, or at least she assumed she did as their visors met briefly, and she nodded him toward the entrance to the building.
“Keep your eyes on us, Zero,” she added, hearing a whispered acknowledgment from behind and above them.
“The energy signature is inside,” Specter said, as though he could see the power source, “room clearance?”
“Room clearance,” Brandt agreed, before turning to Paterson. “You remember how to do a r…”
“Oh, puh-LEASE,” he complained quietly and sarcastically as he hefted the pistol and gripped it tightly, “it hasn’t been that long, and I’m not so old as to start losing my memory just yet.” Brandt smiled behind her visor but nodded, then gave Specter the go-ahead.
Instead of kicking the door down and loudly announcing their presence to anyone, anything, in hearing range, Specter instead placed a small device from an armor pouch onto the panel that logically appeared to be a locking mechanism. It chirped and chuntered for a while until a short buzz of static sounded and the large doorway clicked open a fraction. He removed the device and nodded back that he was ready as the second pistol appeared in his free hand. Brandt glanced at both men and nodded back.
Specter moved fast, almost impossibly fast as his superior prototype armor reacted to the superhuman speed of his robotic limbs inside the suit. Paterson and Brandt followed, weapons up and moving fast, to find a wrecked room with leafy detritus and crates littering the ground. Over the sight of her weapon, which moved everywhere her eyes did, Brandt got the immediate impression that she was in some kind of field laboratory. They swept through the room, fanning out into a loose lateral line as they went, until they reached a door halfway along the abandoned chamber. Specter, the closest to it, went static there to cover it as the other two kept advanc
ing towards the second door at the far end. Reaching that, they too went static and a chorusing echo of ‘clear’ ran through the channel. Brandt told Specter to hold his position, before reaching out to hit the rounded control which suggested some kind of emergency release mechanism; like the old push-bar escape doors back on Earth. That door led outside to a separate section of fenced-off enclosure where the trees had encroached right up to the wire. They closed the door, returning to where the only other exit from the room was covered by the unmoving form of Specter who had one gun on that unopened door and another pointing back towards their entry point. That door was opened much the same way as the external yard one had been, and it showed a room of a similar size running off the one they were in, like the floorplan ran in a large T shape. They poured through the door and moved like water seeking the quickest way to return to a resting state, when a warning came from outside.
“Movement,” Zero said intensely but without a hint of panic. Panic only bred more panic when it was transmitted over a channel. “Three creatures, can’t make ‘em out fully, approaching the compound from the west.”
“Va’alen?” Brandt asked, consciously trying to keep her own voice as level and cool as Zero’s.
“Negative. Bi-pedal, feathered, elongated tails, rough height of a human.” Brandt’s visor met those of the others with her and asked the question they had found themselves pondering more often than was comfortable on the surface of the moon they had crash-landed on.
Predatory?
Without a doubt, they had to be bad news, and Brandt decided she’d rather lose her chance at this year’s humanitarian award and stay alive. If she was wrong, then she was wrong.
“Take them out,” she ordered coldly, waiting the split-second before a metallic twang thumped the air outside the building.
“One down, the other two scattered. No shot, repeat no shot.” The three of them moved in an instant to find cover from the doorway just as a clattering noise sounded above them.
It’s on the roof, Brandt thought before a noise at the doorway made her look back and widen her eyes in primeval terror.
Silhouetted in the wide, tall doorway was a thing that looked like a seven-foot-tall chicken with a long, muscular-looking tail like a massive alligator. It had a wide head brimming with long, conical teeth and feathers which lent it the appearance of wearing a shaggy brown coat. It ducked its head as she held her breath and watched the HUD try to make sense of the new outline it detected. The wide head swung from side to side, mouth wide open and long tongue snaking out to taste the air like a reptile.
“What the fu–” Paterson began, just as it froze and cocked its head to issue a shriek in his direction from a beak full of sharp, conical teeth. Two shots rang out, so close to one another that they couldn’t have come from the same weapon, and Brandt followed the direction of the noise to see Specter with both of his heavy pistols up and pointing at the falling creature. Before any of them could react to what they saw, the sound of tearing metal sheets erupted from behind their position near the doorway. An ominous thud of a large body hitting the deck reverberated around the abandoned structure as all three of them turned to face the newest threat. Slowly, the wide head brimming with teeth, rose up from where it had landed, taller and wider than the one Specter had just killed without mercy. In place of the shaggy brown pelt of dull, bristled feathers, this one boasted a vivid plumage of red and a blue so bright that it seemed electric. It cocked its head, swung it side to side to take in all of them, before scraping a thickly-scaled leg back and dragging elongated claws over the detritus in readiness to attack.
As weapons turned to face it, impossibly slow in comparison to how fast the thing moved, a flash of bright metal swung downwards with a sickening crack to beat down on the outstretched neck of the beast. It faltered, shrieking in agony and rage as it turned to the source of the attack. Emerging unsteadily from the shadow of a wide support pillar and swinging what looked like an ornate billhook the length of a human leg downwards in a savage arc to crush the neck of the predator down once more, came the shape of something instantly outlined and recognized by their HUDs.
VA’ALEN – 98.76% MATCH.
The billhook-type blade rose a third time, pausing at the height of its upswing as though the thing wielding it, as terrifying to the humans as the beasts hunting them, summoned yet more strength to deliver the killing blow. Before the blade could bludgeon down on the layers of spiny feathers which had defeated the dull edge of the weapon on the first two attempts to decapitate it, the thing turned as it coiled, striking out with sharp teeth and both hind legs as talons broke through the hard carapace of the alien and the teeth ripped hard chunks of it away. The Va’alen, already missing the arms on one side of its body, which seemed so dull and dusty in comparison to the ones they had seen before, toppled onto its back and dropped the blade before it could strike a blow.
The three of them stood mesmerized for a second, unable to contemplate which posed the greater danger to them, until Brandt sucked in air sharply through her nose and raised her weapon to drill a dozen shots through the thick coat of the animal and drop it lifeless on top of their enemy. All of them converged, ignoring the increasingly frantic calls over the radio for their situation, and pointed weapons at the badly injured Va’alen. The arms on its left side, the only ones attached to the big body, flailed weakly for the billhook. Specter, standing closest to the weapon, pushed it away with an armored boot as he kept his pistols up, one pointed at the alien’s center mass and the other sweeping the room. It lashed out with a powerful leg to knock Specter down hard onto his back, as the remaining arms snatched up the body of the brightly plumed predator and flung it bodily to hit both Paterson and Brandt in the chest plates and knock them back. It rose, defying the sorry state it appeared to be in and threatening death to all three of them. Its featureless face split open to reveal rows of elongated and very sharp fangs, as it roared a challenge at them, its arms spread wide as though it still possessed the two missing from one side. That roar, that deafening challenge, was cut short as Specter performed a gymnastic flip back to his feet and, ignoring the dropped pistols, snapped a wide blade like an ancient Roman short sword from the forearm of his armor and drove it deep into the chest of the Va’alen, until his bunched fist connected to bounce the dying alien off the blade and into the nearest wall, where it rebounded and flopped to the deck.
It looked up at them, or at least gave them the impression it looked up at them, as it had no facial features to read, and croaked a hissed sequence through obvious pain. The software of the suit worked to translate the words as it repeated them again, louder, and it convulsed horribly.
[FOR THE HIVE LORDS]
“What the hell are the Hive Lords?” Brandt snapped, jabbing a boot into the fallen alien. It didn’t respond, instead it convulsed one more time, more violently than before, forcing them to take a step backwards and raise their guns, before going still. Brandt’s HUD flashed the outline of it from orange to red, indicating that it was dead.
“What? Hive Lords?” Paterson asked.
“Hive Lords?” Zero’s voice echoed over the channel as the sound of their mech advancing echoed outside the building, “What in God’s name are you three doing in there?”
“Everyone converge on our position,” Brandt ordered as she glanced up at the darkening skies through the fresh hole in the roof of the alien shelter, “I’ll explain when you get here.”
Chapter Thirteen – Admiral’s Quarters, The Indomitable
“Leave us,” Dassiova ordered to the other senior officers in the meeting, his unwavering gaze locked onto Torres unnervingly. The room emptied in hurried silence.
“Out of a slither of respect for your tenuous rank and position in command of what is becoming an iconic ship in Earth’s fleet,” he said carefully, formally, “I’m going to give you the opportunity to explain to me personally exactly what happened.”
Torres swallowed, glancing at the chair in fro
nt of the desk where the admiral sat. Dassiova glanced at it too, not extending the junior officer an invitation to sit. He remained standing to attention, the best way to prevent further punishment, in his experience, and explained everything.
“Sir, we detected a sensor reading indicating a shrouded enemy ship movement at the extremity of our visible range,” he began stiffly. “Based on calculations and some informed assumptions, we believe the enemy force to be in excess of a number the entire fleet could expect to repel.”
“Not your decision to make, Captain, but go on,” Dassiova interrupted quietly.
“I gave orders for our entire arsenal to be unloaded at the enemy mass in order to degrade their forces before they arrived in this sector, which we anticipate will be in–”
“Will be in a little under three weeks, if my calculations and assumptions are correct,” the admiral said, “which is more than enough time to deploy a minefield, plan an ambush of their approach trajectory and formulate a disciplined defense, wouldn’t you agree, Captain? Which would have been entirely possible, had you fallen back out of range of detection and reported the enemy disposition instead of basically closing your goddamned eyes and pulling the trigger on full auto?”
Torres was trapped. Logic dictated that the plan Dassiova had just suggested to him was a good one, despite a couple of stalling points he could envisage right away, but to disagree was lunacy. To agree was to shoot himself in the foot. He chose to appear wrong, as opposed to appearing foolish and arrogant.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And what did you discover after you launched every last one of a finite supply of heavy munitions?”
Torres swallowed again and told the story.
~
Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3 Page 13