Go, it said, do not fail. Bring me a living human; I want to feel their minds and learn all that they know before they die.
~
“New standing order,” Brandt said a little breathlessly as her heart rate was still dropping back to normal, “nobody goes anywhere alone, and everybody stays ready to shoot.” She had replayed the video feed recorded by her suit for the rest of the team via their HUDs, hearing the gasps and Paterson’s trademark low whistle as the gray-skinned crocodile-type animal erupted in slow motion from the water. Zero had made no show of pride in his shot, an impossible shot for almost anyone, but Brandt knew him well enough to recognize that he had just chalked up an entry to his personal top-ten most awesome things list.
“The jungle is too dangerous,” Horne complained, “You’ve holed us up in a death trap and it’s just a matter of time before something eats us.”
“Trust me, asshole,” Payne said, still shaken from her narrow escape and allowing the stress to infringe on her professionalism, “anything taking a bite out of you will probably spit you back out on taste alone.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” the PMC asked as he tried to draw himself up to her height and square off. Specter intervened, reaching out with his left hand and putting it in front of Horne’s chest plate. The shorter man walked into it, expecting some give at least, but rebounded half a step and backed off.
“If you’ll recall,” Brandt said, as though the altercation hadn’t happened, “the plains were just as inhospitable, and there was no water supply there. Besides, the temperature doesn’t drop to dangerous levels at night under the canopy. We have an obligation to recover and record what we’ve found here; unless you know of any other abandoned Va’alen outposts?” Horne said nothing, but his body language made his feelings plain enough.
“So,” Paterson said in a tone which indicated he was going to find what he was going to say funny even if nobody else would, “you prefer killer dinosaur birds and dropship-sized crocs to dog-sized scorpions and pterodactyls?”
“Yes,” Brandt said flatly, no trace of irony in her reply. None of the others spoke.
“Anyway,” Paterson said to her, “I need you to look at something.” Brandt nodded to Zero, who acknowledged her unspoken order by deploying the team into defensive positions. She followed Paterson inside, back into the room where the bodies of the predatory bird and the dead Va’alen were, both wrapped in body bags and straining the edges, as both were too big for the plastic coverings designed for humans. Specter followed her, uninvited but unchallenged, and the three of them stood around the slowly spinning, thrumming energy generator. Brandt used the physical interface on her left forearm to retract her helmet, exposing her face as Specter did. Paterson followed suit and all three muted their microphones to isolate their conversation from the team channel.
“I’ve got something,” Paterson told them as he pushed the ‘glyph icons on the console below the two opposing metal objects suspended by physics they didn’t fully understand. In response to his activation the hum increased in intensity as the elements spun faster. “The power supply is perpetual,” he explained, “the elements generate their electromagnetic fields to generate power, and that power in turn increases the spin and the power keeps rising. There has to be an upper limit, but I’m not really comfortable testing that. Not here anyway.”
Brandt watched, mesmerized as the copper sphere shimmered out of focus so that both metals could be seen clearly and shimmered like in a heat haze. The humming noise wound down again as Paterson hit a second icon on the console to reduce the power.
“Can we tap into it?” Specter asked. “Can we use it to power the mech?” The concern of their available power was one they hadn’t fully considered yet. Their suits were topped up, even if the mech rig wasn’t fully restored, and another day spent on the move would reduce them all to siphoning off power from Specter’s internal singularity source. That would mean only one or two of them would be effective at any one time.
“I’m working on it,” Paterson replied a little snappily, showing how tired he was and how his sudden return to operational soldiering had frayed his softened nerves. Brandt shot Specter a look, hoping to convey that he should lay off, and turned back to Paterson to sooth him. Before she could open her mouth, Zero cut in over the channel.
“Aircraft inbound!”
“Everybody under cover now,” Brandt barked, forgetting for a second that her microphone was muted. She cursed herself, reactivated it and repeated the order. “Cut power to everything detectable and tuck in.” She ran to the back of that room, back to where the body of the Va’alen lay, and instead of showing herself outside, she peered upwards through the hole in the roof where the bright colored bird-osaur thing had attacked. Her helmet folded out from the collar of her suit at the touch of the screen on her arm, the HUD springing to life as soon as the visor covered her face. In her ear, the rest of the team reported their positions as she stared skywards through the canopy encroaching on the abandoned outpost. She took a gasp of breath in, having forgotten to breathe through the tension, and before she could let that breath out, the sky above her darkened in a flash before the bright sunlight returned. Her HUD registered the silhouette that accompanied the high-pitched whine of the Va’alen vessel.
“Clear,” Zero said in a voice like still water. “Four ships passed overhead. No change to course or speed.”
“Trajectory?” Brandt asked in a soft voice, as though the ships could hear her.
“Calculating,” Zero responded before a pause. “Crash site is my guess.”
“Which means they’ll be following out trail,” Horne cut in. “A kid could track us in armor and a mech.” Brandt pressed her lips into a thin line to stop herself from shutting the mercenary down for stating the obvious. The thought had occurred to her also, because two pairs of Va’alen warriors heading directly for where they’d crashed couldn’t be a coincidence. Her mind buzzed with questions about why their pursuit had taken two days to start, but wasting time thinking about it did nothing to stop the clock. She guessed that the time it would take their enemy to reach them would be far less than it had taken them to get there themselves. The realization struck her that their time was ticking down to discovery and eventually, further conflict.
“Screw it,” she muttered under her breath.
“Commander?” Payne asked, mistakenly thinking that she had missed an order. Brandt ignored the question.
“Turner, is Perez good to move?” she asked over the channel.
“I’m good, Commander,” Perez answered in place of the medic.
“Commander, I don…” Turner began before their downed trooper cut in.
“I can drive the mech,” Perez offered, “less movement needed.” Brandt heard a couple of seconds where no argument came from the medic.
“Do it,” she ordered. “Everyone else, grab everything; whatever we can’t take or don’t need goes back in the crate.”
“And what do we do with the crate?” Horne asked petulantly, if only to pick fault with her orders.
“Jamie?” she asked, dropping the professionalism in favor of a little bravado.
“I can work something out,” Paterson said.
“Good. Payne? Rig up the sub-space beacon. These assholes will know we’re here soon anyway, and I prefer to place a long-distance call now, rather than later.”
Chapter Twenty –Unnamed Moon Surface, Tanto crash site
Fal K’rath stood in the center of the crater where the Tanto had crashed and lost containment of its singularity drive. The resulting blast and implosion had wiped out any trace of their landing, and any search of the area for clues or trails had to begin far outside the blast radius. He ignored the flashing light of the device in his hand as it signified a radiation warning, and sent the other pair, mates as dedicated to one another, to their clan, to the Hive Lords, as he and his own mate were. They began their search at opposing sides of the near-circular crater and w
orked in opposing directions, so that each Va’alen warrior covered a quarter of the radius.
His mate made the call first, calling them from behind the low crest of the higher ground that had not been leveled by the blast.
“Footprints,” she said, “many footprints. They gathered here and went in two directions.”
“They split up?” her female counterpart scoffed. “Why would the foolish humans separate their tiny forces?”
“No,” K’rath interrupted as he studied the marks in the dust. “Two went this way, one running with long strides and one with short strides. Both came back at the same pace.”
“One of the cowards ran away?” his mate asked. K’rath turned an eyeless look on her which resulted in her head bowing, as she had spoken out of turn to offend him. He had been privy to the feeling of fear felt by the Hive Lords. Fear of the humans, despite how weak their bodies were, even in their metal hides. Fear of what their arrival and their cowardly stealth attacks had done to their forces. The alliance, and without doubt their particular expedition, was at risk now that these little mammals had discovered the ability to travel further than their own star. Because of this fear he had been forced to feel, he took her derision of them as an offence.
“Do not underestimate our enemy,” he growled at them all until their heads bowed in submission. “We may be hunting them, but if more of them come, it will be us who are hunted. Chased through the system until we are all eradicated. The ‘Lords know from the signals and probes these humans sent out into the galaxy that they consume everything they touch. They are a disease, a plague on the galaxy, and they will sweep us away if we do not respect that.”
“We must… respect them, Fal?” the other male warrior asked. Fal K’rath considered the question for a moment.
“Yes,” he replied, “we respect them, and we kill them. Then we kill any more of them we can find until they stop coming here or we are sent home.”
Or until we die by their hands, he added privately to himself before a stab of worry hit him that the Hive Lord could still be lingering at the back of his consciousness to monitor their mission. He was saved any further concern on that point by an incoming communication.
“Fal,” his mate said, “the Aq has returned from the rail gun battery.”
“And?” K’rath demanded.
“And the gun was destroyed by orbital bombardment, it seems,” she said, her head bowed deeply to prevent any hostility at the news being redirected at her, “and the bunker also, but by animals and not humans or their weapons.” K’rath’s mind boiled over with thoughts and criticisms. Could the animals on this rock be more dangerous than Va’alen warriors? Then he modified his thoughts, knowing that the strongest of warriors were elsewhere, and some of the Va’alen he had seen appointed to guard the mining base were not much bigger than the offspring of his clan.
“No matter,” he said, “we will hunt down these humans and be done here. I want as many of them as possible kept alive for the Hive Lord to pick clean their minds.”
They followed the tracks, bounding forwards in pairs to take turns moving as the others took cover and kept a watch for targets. The maneuver was a simple covering advance, and unknown to the Va’alen, was one adopted by the humans for centuries. The art of infantry tactics was a logical conclusion, it seemed to any casual observer. Their pursuit led them to higher ground where the loose, jagged rocks under their feet made tracking and moving much harder. Had they not been following the deeper impressions left behind by the mechanized rig, they might have lost the trail, but the heavier and larger footprints might as well have been a trail of breadcrumbs. They wasted time running through the pitch-black of the underground tunnels, finding nothing but the inedible remains of what appeared to be giant insects, which led them to conclude that survival inside the tunnels was an impossibility.
After all, weren’t the humans weak outside of their ships?
Fal K’rath ordered his hunters back out into the harsh sunlight where they cast around for signs until one of them found more footprints leading away from the entrance. Above them, circling like black wedges and calling out in short, sharp shrieks, were bird-like creatures. K’rath watched them, guessing that if the humans were still on the open plain, the scavengers would be marking them out just as they were the four Va’alen. The trail was found, and the two pairs moved fast over the rocky, uneven surface.
“Fal,” the other male warrior called to him, “should we not return for our ships?”
“The humans do not have a ship,” he responded, “so we will follow as they are forced to move.”
The trail slowed but became easier to follow as broken branches and deep impressions in softer ground revealed their path towards a small river. Under the canopy, the oppressive heat took on a new element as the humidity increased. Rather than slow down the Va’alen, their carapaces absorbed the moisture and rehydrated them after the dry heat of the plains had baked them.
As one, they slowed and at a signal from one of K’rath’s left hands, they fanned out silently, crouching in the dense foliage where their brown hides blended into the myriad of natural colors. They watched, listening, until eventually their Fal stood and advanced on the abandoned outpost.
Moving in pairs and proceeding with an unnerving silence for bi-pedal creatures so large, the four aliens emerged into the compound through a fresh gap they made in the perimeter fence. Their approach was monitored by the human’s scout drone nestled in a nearby treetop with the four small repulser engines powered down to prevent detection. It still gave off a small electronic signature as the two-way link to Brandt’s suit gave the stranded recon team a bird’s eye view of their enemy, and their silence was thicker in the air than the humidity as they all watched via their HUDs.
Two Va’alen took cover and pointed their weapons at the door as the other two stood either side. Instead of kicking the door in as the humans expected, one of the covering aliens fired a single, huge blast from its weapon directly at the door and missing its own kind by inches. The two on the door seemed to expect this as they slipped through the smoking ruins of the doorway before the metal had stopped arcing from the discharged energy. Brandt wasn’t the only one to purse her lips at the knowledge that their enemy had more powerful personal weapons than they could engineer. Their own technology could only be made small enough to be carried by a mechanized rig, and even then, it had a limited number of shots.
The drone, situated where it was, high above the building, responded to the commander’s controls and rotated the zoom lens to look down through the gap in the low roof to where they had planned their surprise. It had been placed there intentionally so that they could gauge how far they had degraded their pursuers; there was no point in forcing a set battle with unknown numbers of a superior force unless they had the upper hand, or unless they had no other choice.
The pair of Va’alen outside were called in, and through the rent metal of their displays relayed by the drone camera they could see one of them slip its weapon into a sheath at the base of its back as it crouched down to lift the lid of their supply crate.
The burst of what looked like steam came fractionally before the terrifyingly guttural bellow of rage and pain that floated upwards to the drone’s sensors. The alien who had taken the brunt of Paterson’s booby trap fell backwards as the acid rigged to spray outwards from the suddenly depressurized container flowed over their equipment to damage it beyond repair or reverse engineering. Screams of agony and more raging bellows of anger and challenge echoed, and Brandt wasn’t the only one able to detect the sounds in stereo as the alien voices carried loudly through the dense jungle to their position. Whatever the roars meant, she interpreted them as ‘time to go’.
She disconnected the feed to the drone, using her hands to manipulate the projected controls and put it back into auto mode, when the tiny engines fired up to raise it from the treetops to follow the team from above the canopy. It would be useless to them under the cover of
the trees for its primary role, but leaving such a valuable asset behind was out of the question.
“Let’s go,” Brandt ordered, sending them onwards towards the higher ground in the march order she had already established. “That comm burst will be with the Admiral now, and all he has to do is decide how many ships to send for us.”
“It worked?” Paterson asked her hopefully.
“It did,” she said, feeling a little uncomfortable in taking pleasure at such horrific injuries being inflicted, but knowing that they were necessary for their survival. Making the Va’alen fearful of pursing them could make all the difference. It had meant the loss of precious battery power to mix the liquid contents with other substances to make the acid, but any degradation of their enemy was worth it.
Abandoned Va’alen Outpost
Fal K’rath watched in stunned horror as the other male warrior fell backwards from the human object. His pulse rifle fell away to the ground as all four hands scrabbled desperately at the front of his carapace. The hissing, bubbling noise mixed with his screams of pain, but what affected K’rath was not the sound or the obvious agony his fellow warrior was suffering, but the smell. The smell of dissolving bio-armor seeped into his senses and turned him sour. He could not afford time for personal distaste, as the warrior’s mate began to screech and roar her own challenges. K’rath knew, from personal experience all too well, that the wounded warrior’s mate would be feeling his pain. Not his pain, but the echo of his agony; the emotional response attached to pain that was so strong there was no way to distinguish between pain and feelings. For her, it was as real as if her own body were being eaten away by the spray of chemicals.
He reached forwards for the writhing warrior, grasping a limb unaffected by the bubbling substance, and dragged him clear of the human equipment left behind. A glance at his own mate made her intervene and block the other female from rushing to her mate and being affected by the cowardly trap. The equipment, valuable to so many in their expedition and likely worth a high price, disintegrated and melted into a single lump of indistinguishable metal and plastic. Turning away in disgust, he saw his warrior regaining his senses and trying to get up. He failed, falling backwards and arching his back in pain.
Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3 Page 19