by Marc Stevens
It was probably already going through my team’s heads, but I called out on our comms anyway. “Do not use your anomaly weapons. I want to see what's on that ship if possible!”
Coonts had a good angle on the target and got a clean shot that struck the ship just in front of its star drives. A large cloud of debris exited the opposite side of the ship and its drives winked out. It was mortally wounded but still had forward shields and weapons.
The Daggers were programmed to automatically start phasing as soon as the main weapons were fired. We phased past the ship as bright orange beams of energy lanced back down our previous heading. Sael fired a stealth missile that made a crazy tight turn back at the target and transitioned. The hostile ship unleashed a torrent of missiles that were attempting to track our fleeing Daggers. They disappeared from my HUD. We weren’t the only ones with missiles capable of jumping to their targets. Klutch made a hard turn back toward the ship and the missiles transitioned back to normal spacetime well behind us. Sael’s missile found its way through the ships faltering shields and exploded just forward of Coonts’s beam strike. It blew a huge glowing hole in the ship’s hull that sent jets of smoke and wreckage out into the void. The ship’s shields promptly collapsed and it started tumbling. Seconds later the anti-matter containment vessels shot out into space. The AI controlling the ship was trying to save the surviving crew.
The missiles the hostile ship fired, locked onto us again. Klutch dove us for the planet’s surface, and the missiles made another transition. This was not tech we have seen from the Prule in any of our previous engagements. They were making significant upgrades to their arsenals and it was troubling.
Klutch led us down mere feet above the hard deck. We made a very low pass over the planet’s horizon. A large section of the planet’s surface erupted out into the void when the missiles failed to make the turn after they transitioned from hyperspace. I had to give the Troop Master his due. It was a slick trick. What I didn’t realize, was that it was more than just a trick on Klutch’s part. He made his pass over the area where Sael reported an underground anomaly. When the missiles transitioned back to normal spacetime, they plowed into the planet’s surface over a large area. Many exploded over the underground target. I doubted if they penetrated very deeply into the rocky surface, but it had to be a wake-up call to the subterranean occupants. They would know that their location was no longer a secret.
13
It was time to see if our IST transmissions could reach Justice back at the gateway hub. The Dagger’s AI boosted the signal to the maximum. “Justice, have you got a copy?”
The transmission had to travel millions of light-years, and I didn’t have any idea how long the lag in our comms would be. Once Justice got a lock on our coordinates, he could feasibly jump here faster than the gateway could transport the Legacy. The DEHD core’s matrix should be charged by now and it was just a matter of time before he would find us.
We made full power scans of the local star system. Other than the damaged ship fragment we were alone. We focused our scans on the planet’s surface. What we thought were two individual locations turned out to be one. The volcano’s cauldron had a large lava tube that connected to the other location several miles away. All of it may have been a naturally occurring formation leftover from the planet’s birth. The more I saw, the more my stomach tensed. The tunnel was a lot like the death trap we had recently escaped. The lava tube below the volcano was wide enough for the ship to have a landing area. The formation at the other end of the tunnel plunged to over three miles deep and it was a mile and a half wide.
The Daggers would have no problems navigating the tunnel. I sent our location to the drones guarding the gateway. The Legacy could arrive in the next few hours, and I would leave it up to Justice to corral the wreckage of the ship.
“Klutch, take us into the volcano. I want to see what the Prule have been doing.”
Klutch turned us around and we headed directly for the volcano. As we cleared the rim, our scanners detected two massive doors a couple of hundred feet below us. We didn’t bother knocking. Three well-placed shots from our beam weapons dropped half of the door down into the tunnel. If they didn’t already know how things turned out with their ship, our entrance was self-explanatory.
We entered the tube and found that dropping the door into the tunnel had some additional benefits. There was a large force of Prule Hunters waiting to greet us. The giant piece of door crushed several weapons emplacements. It didn’t do our welcoming committee any good either. We unleashed our point defense weapons into the survivors. We slaughtered the bio-machines. The return fire fell off to nothing as Coonts turned the last of the Hunters into a cloud of hot gaseous byproducts. We moved up the tunnel phasing at minimum power. The brilliant pulsing flashes of our Daggers phasing had to be intimidating even to the Prule. We came to an atmospheric retention field and passed through it. The temperature jumped to one hundred and four degrees, and we got the usual caustic readings from the crap the Prule passed off as air. Several mounted weapons opened fire at us. They must have thought they could stick it to us. The incoming fire was wrecking the tunnel around us and partially blocking it. The atmosphere became obscured with dust and flying debris. The Prule didn’t know it yet, but It was a waste of time while we were phasing. Our phase fields sucked the weapons fire and debris colliding with us into hyperspace. We spread out into a “V” formation and let our point defense weapons scythe down everything in front of us. We got a large popup target warning. A transport that looked a lot like a smaller version of a resource gathering platform came around a bend in the tunnel. The big flatbed on the rear of the craft was filled with Prule Hunters. All of them opened fire at us. Klutch hit it with a single shot from his Dagger’s main beam weapon. The unshielded transport all but disintegrated in a blinding explosive flash. We passed through the flying debris. There were still a few Hunters moving around behind the transport. We drove right through them. Those that weren’t destroyed by our point defense weapons were sucked into our phase fields.
As sudden calm settled over the tunnel. We didn’t know if the Prule threw in the towel, or ran out of cannon fodder. We flew the last half mile to the main base unopposed. We turned another gradual bend in the tunnel and found ourselves at one of the massive doors we had seen on several occasions.
Klutch called a halt. “Commander, if there are prisoners on the other side of this door, we could kill them all if we blast our way through.”
I wasn’t going to let that happen. “Roger that. Let's go take a look and see what we can find.”
We shut down our Daggers and set Justice’s subsystems to a defensive posture. We climbed out of our Daggers and they slowly moved into a semi-circle around the door.
We formed up behind Klutch and he pointed the portal device at the corner of the massive door. We readied our weapons and cloaked. I rapped him on the shoulder. He got a good hole on the first attempt. We went through fast and he quickly shut down the portal. We were in a brightly lit cavern with a marginal oxygen atmosphere. That boded well for the possibility of living prisoners. There were three more of the flatbed transports parked directly in front of us. We used our suit scanners to see if there were hostiles close. For the time being, we were alone and unchallenged. There were sheer rock walls on all three sides of the transport parking area. They went all the way up to the overhead rock ceiling. All three had vault-like doors on them. They were large enough for the transports to easily pass through.
“Klutch, you and Coonts make sure those transports won’t be going anywhere.”
They gave me a quick acknowledgment and boosted up onto the hull of the first transport. Tria, Sael, and I went to inspect the entry doors to the facility. There was no obvious way to open them but that did not pose a problem for us. I glanced over my shoulder to check on Coonts and Klutch’s progress. They were standing on the nose of transport near its viewscreen. Klutch made a hole and Coonts tossed a couple of grenades in.
They had one to go and joined up with us a couple of minutes later.
Klutch uncloaked and cleared his war mask. He had an evil smile on his face. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “If one of the Throggs goes into the cockpit, it will be for the last time.”
I nodded and pointed at the center vault door. “Make a hole.”
We stacked and Klutch gave us a good portal. We rushed in expecting a fight. We found ourselves in a large open area. It was pitch black and our no-light sensors showed we had no movement. There were five cargo lifts with large cylindrical containers on them. Each had a glowing control panel on them.
Coonts and Sael went to the container closest to us. “Commander,” Coonts called. “This is an active entity container.”
Sael went to another. “This one is active as well.”
The containers were large enough to hold millions of Prule entities. They were probably being prepped for the journey to the manufacturing plant.
It was my turn for an evil grin. “Is there a way to turn them off?”
Sael went back to where Coonts was studying the control panel. They both started fiddling with the controls. They started wigwagging at each other, and I could tell they were having a useless conversation on another comms channel. Tria put a halt to that crap by pointing her shotgun at the control panel of another container. She shot it with a penetrator slug that wrecked the controls and made an impressive dent in the armored container. She gave it a double-tap that blew a hole in the side. A reddish-pink viscous fluid gushed onto the deck.
The Troop Master laughed out loud and shot another. Coonts and Sael stepped away from the one they were messing with and blasted holes into it. I joined in on the target shooting and we made quick work out of the remaining containers. Admittedly, it wasn’t as satisfying as pissing them to death, but it got the job done much faster.
What we passed off as a good time, must have been frowned on by the occupants of the facility. There were four heavily reinforced doors against the back wall of the parking area. Two of the doors opened and Prule maintenance machines came pouring out. We emptied our slug magazines into the oncoming hordes. We threw grenades and gave them a dose of explosive buckshot. That slowed them a little but didn’t stop them. Another door opened, and more of the worker machines poured out of it. We boosted up onto one of the transports and gave them a steady rain of grenades and mini-gun fire. Someone on the other side of the door wisely decided sending unarmed machines after us was fruitless. The big doors all slammed shut stemming the flow of adversaries. We stood back to back and finished off the last of the bio-machines as they climbed up the sides of the transport to attack us. It crossed my mind there was a Hivemind somewhere in the complex, and it was getting desperate. The Bio-machine must have thought help would be arriving from the manufacturing facility on the planet. I didn’t know if a Prule could soil itself, but I bet the Throgg learned how when its comms went unanswered.
Our minigun ammo was almost depleted but we still had a good supply of shotgun ammo. We dropped our spent magazine and slapped fresh ones into place. I still had seven grenades left in my storage pouch and would try to use the rest sparingly. The high explosive rounds from our tube launchers were hard on our armor in close quarters. Like our beam weapons, they would be used as a last resort. I looked over at Klutch. He was locked, loaded, and ready.
“Pick a spot Troop Master, and make a hole.”
Coonts thought it would be helpful to suggest one of the doors. He pointed to one on our right. Klutch decided the one on the left. I could only imagine what their comms sounded like. I started wondering if Tria would mind toting the portal device around.
We were stacking behind the Troop Master when he turned to us and held up a hand. “Commander, it's not like they don’t know we are coming. They may have their remaining forces massed at the doors. I am going to open a portal long enough to launch a couple of high explosive rounds inside and then close it. I recommend we do it at each door, then we go through the wall.”
No one could argue with that logic, and we stepped back to give him some room. I heard him mumble over his mic, that a ten-second delay ought to be about right. He pointed his tube launcher at the door and activated the device. As soon as the portal appeared, he fired two rounds into it and shut it down. He took off running for the door Coonts had suggested. He didn’t have to tell us to follow. Several seconds later, the twin blasts registered as small thumps through our armored boots. I glanced back at the door. It was now bulging outward and had a crack in it that was spewing smoke.
Klutch waved me up. I readied my launcher and set my rounds with a ten-second delay. I gave him a nod and he activated the device. I fired, and we rapidly moved back across the parking area to the next door. We repeated the process two more times. Klutch chose a spot about twenty feet to the side of the first doorway we bombed. We stacked behind him with our shotguns up and ready. He made a hole and we charged through. We found ourselves in a dimly lit passage, and could only go left or right. My HUD confirmed our current position. We were sixty feet from our previous location, and the door closest to our entry point was to our left rear. Klutch hung a right and we followed in close formation behind him. We came to another door. Other than being big and metallic, it was just a regular entry hatch. There was no obvious way to open it, and Klutch waved us back. We retreated about twenty feet. The Troop Master lowered his armored shoulder and boosted into the door. His mass made short work of it. The whole mess caved into a brightly lit room. Klutch rolled up off the deck and started shooting. We followed him in and shot down three other maintenance machines before they could turn to face us. What we found in the room made a chill run up my spine. The walls of the room were lined with more than a hundred large tables. Each had an alien on it. They had tubes, cables, and wiring running from their bodies to a large humming piece of machinery hanging down from the ceiling. Some of the aliens I recognized, others I did not. Tria and Sael were looking at two Chaalt warriors that had somehow ended up in this place. They did not recognize them but were nonetheless shocked that the Prule were milking their brains for information. Coonts and Klutch found some of their species as well. There were victims from everyone's respective races except mine. I closed my eyes and silently thanked my maker.
Some of the unfortunate aliens were killed as a result of our attack on the Prule maintainers. Flying shrapnel had ripped into their unprotected bodies. I stood frozen in place staring at the horrors surrounding me. It was heartbreaking to see, but I didn’t know what we could have done any differently. Klutch waved to Coonts and Sael. They took up defensive positions at the wrecked hatch.
Tria approached me and put her hand on my shoulder. She turned me around to face her and uncloaked. When it didn’t bring a response from me, she cleared her war mask so I could see her face.
“Nathan, those that died are now with our maker. They can no longer be tortured by the Bio-machines. We cannot leave the rest of these people like this. The Prule have corrupted their bodies and are stealing their thoughts. They are using them to find our weaknesses and the secrets to our technology. We must free them from this reality.”
Tria was right, but it didn’t make what we had to do any easier. Sael came over to me and uncloaked. “Commander, you should search the rest of the complex, I will catch up to you.”
She didn’t have to spell it out for me. She was volunteering to kill the poor bastards so I wouldn’t have their blood on my hands.
“No Sael. I will do what's necessary.”
I pulled an anti-matter charge from my munitions storage pack. If Tria or Sael had anything else to say, they let it go and joined up with Coonts and Klutch. It was funny how a weapon of mass destruction could kill a conversation. A warning started flashing red in all of our HUDs when I armed it. I set the charge for remote detonation and put a two-hour anti-tamper failsafe on it. I boosted up to the machinery hanging from the overhead. I shoved the bomb into the tightest recess I could find and rejo
ined my strike team.
“Move out Troop Master.”
We moved quickly back down the corridor until we reached the junction where we ported in. Klutch slowed and held up a fist. The was a faint noise coming from the junction. The Troop Master poked his shotgun low around the corner and used the optical sight to get a look. He transferred the targeting feed to our HUDs. Four maintenance machines were trying to maneuver a mounted weapon up the corridor on a gravity sled. The sled barely fit in the passage. The noise we were hearing was the sled making occasional contact with the walls. The Troop Master held his tube launcher up and we flattened against the wall. He fired a single high explosive round down the corridor. The jarring blast sent pieces and parts of the Prule and their weapon flying in all directions. When the smoke and flames thinned enough to see the results of his handy work, Klutch gave me a thumbs up. The passage was now partially blocked and there was no way to pass easily through the wreckage of the weapon.
Even though we were cloaked and negating the localized scans searching for us, it wouldn’t be hard to follow our progress. I pointed down the corridor and Klutch moved out. Just like the opposite end of the passage, there was a single large door at the end of it. This one was of a much stouter design. Klutch turned to me and pointed at the portal device. I nodded and we stacked behind him. He activated the device and got a good hole. That was the last thing I remembered seeing when I found myself laying in a pile of debris. I had no idea what just happened. My HUD gave me a headcount. We were all alive, but Klutch had sustained some severe blunt force trauma and was unconscious. I was shocked to see he was back down the corridor behind us. Coonts and Sael were the first to their feet and started pulling rubble off of Tria. I got up on my hands and knees and crawled to where she was laying.