by C H Gideon
Their target was located twelve kilometers beneath the surface. If the Legion’s intel was right, they would need to dig through at least thirty kilometers of synthetic stone before reaching an open passage roughly five times that long. Whatever was buried on this rock must have been important for its previous owner to bury it behind a thirty-kilometer-thick wall of molecularly-assembled stone designed to look exactly like the natural stone it adjoined.
Such an undertaking seemed extraordinary, but Xi knew it was a relatively minor thing compared to mining the core of a gas giant for rare minerals, which the Jemmin and Vorr appeared capable of doing on at least some level. Still, she found her curiosity rising the more she thought about what they might find buried so deep beneath the Brick’s surface.
The Vorr had sent Armor Corps on this merry chase, and even at its commencement, Xi had been more than a little skeptical about their motives. Colonel Jenkins seemed more convinced than she was that the Vorr were trying to help, but why leave something of such importance buried on a desert world like this, even for just a few decades?
The minutes ticked by, stretching into hours before finally she received word from the Gash’s floor.
“This is Styles, calling Elvira.”
“Elvira here, go Styles,” she acknowledged.
“We’re ready to deploy the package,” he replied. “Awaiting your orders to commence.”
“Mr. Styles,” Xi said urgently, “the order is given. Operation Red Rock is ‘go.’ I say again: Operation Red Rock is ‘go.’”
“Copy that,” Styles said, and her mech’s visual pickups showed exo-suited workers disembark the various vehicles which had conveyed them to the dig site. Those workers began unfastening components of the complex machine from their moorings on the heavy haulers, and within minutes the first laser drills were carving into the hard stone of the Gash’s northern face.
“Unbelievable,” Styles said in amazement as he analyzed the stone they were cutting away from the rock-face. It had taken nearly an hour for the rock to cool down enough for his instruments to process it, but the data coming back was fascinating.
“What is it?” asked Glenda Baldwin, the dig crew’s boss, as she came to look over his shoulder at the handful of dust he had scanned.
“The radiation,” he lied, knowing he could not reveal any sensitive information to the civilians. Or his own people, for that matter. Of the men and women on the Brick at that moment, just Xi, Ford, Winters, and Styles were aware of the dig’s details. “It’s remarkable that it can be so much lower down here.”
“Yeah, right.” Baldwin grunted. “Look, my people and I are getting four years’ salary for a two-week dig. We understand that whatever we’re looking for here is important and that you can’t tell us what it is, but don’t treat me like I’m stupid.” She snorted, turning and clomping off toward the drill vehicle as it tore chunks of stone off the cliffside. “Radiation, my ass!”
Styles couldn’t blame the woman for being uncomfortable, but she was right: he couldn’t afford to tell her anything.
He refocused on the basketful of debris he had gathered from the rock-face and compared it to some of the loose material from farther up the slope. Chemically it was a perfect match, which made sense given that whoever had made the tunnel in the first place would have wanted to use the same material when sealing the thing back up.
But the molecular rearrangement necessary to make the rock-layer appear identical to the rest of the cliff face boggled Styles’ mind. It would have taken a computer core as powerful as the Bonhoeffer’s a full year of continuous runtime to match the level of precision they were seeing at this end of the tunnel.
It was possible, even likely, that the farther in they went, the less detailed the arrangement would become. But the early indications were that this was either a fool’s quest and they were digging into a previously-unmolested wall of rock on a desolate, worthless planet…or that whoever buried this chamber didn’t want anyone finding it without knowing precisely where to look.
The fate of the Metal Legion—and possibly even humanity itself—rested on which it was. Colonel Jenkins and General Akinouye had placed their bets, and Styles was inclined to agree with them.
But as he looked up at the nearly-vertical fifteen-kilometer-high cliff-face above him, he was unable to completely shake the feeling that this was all part of some elaborate ruse.
“Elvira, this is Trapper,” came the unexpected hail from the grizzled sergeant major.
“Trapper, Elvira,” she acknowledged.
“We’ve dug out our nests on the southern face,” Trapper explained. “We’re ready to arm up.”
“Roger,” Xi replied approvingly. Trapper’s people had dug out two dozen nests using explosives and plasma torches, and they had done so nearly a full hour ahead of schedule. “I’ll call the Bonhoeffer and get the first supply cans delivered ASAP. I’m also bringing up the heavy haulers so they can retrieve the cans for your people to use as barracks. They’ll be exposed for now, but after we arm your nests, my people will be able to carve out some more breathing room.”
“Much obliged,” Trapper replied, and for a moment he sounded precisely like his son.
Xi initiated a P2P with the Assault Carrier and transmitted the coordinates for the next drop. “Bonhoeffer Control, this is Dragon Actual. We’re ready for room service.”
The voice that greeted her was a pleasant surprise. “Copy that, Dragon Actual,” Podsy replied. “Relay target coordinates, and we’ll make sure it’s still steaming when you get it.”
“Do my ears deceive me?” Xi asked, unable to keep from grinning like an idiot at hearing Podsy’s voice. “Bonhoeffer Actual authorized you to use a mic?” she pressed while sending a confirmation of the drop-zone’s coordinates, which were just two klicks to the south.
The terrain there was too broken for the TBM to have come down since the heavy lifters required a relatively flat surface, which was why they had brought it down considerably farther out. But the APCs were more than capable of running across the rocky, shattered landscape to retrieve these much-needed supplies.
“Consider my comm privileges early parole for good behavior.” Podsy chuckled.
Xi snickered. “Your butt-snorkeling skills are legendary.”
“Not all of us are built like brick shithouses, Captain,” Podsednik retorted. “Each according to his means.”
“Better dead than well-fed, eh, Lieutenant?” she quipped.
“We’ll hit our drop window in three minutes,” Podsy said, cutting short the banter. “Keep an eye on the sky. Bonhoeffer Control, out.”
The line cut before Xi said, “It’s good to…” Her voice trailed off, realizing the connection was dead as she meekly finished, “…hear your voice, Podsy.” For some reason, she felt legitimately bad that she had failed to open the conversation with her former Wrench on those terms. They had been deployed on the Brick for nearly a week now, and this was the first communication she had received from the newly minted lieutenant. She felt like such an ass for reasons not entirely clear to her.
Xi shook her head to clear it of the distractions. She keyed up the channel to 3rd Platoon. “Cave Troll, we’ve got a delivery inbound. I’m forwarding the coordinates and itinerary. Escort Sergeant Major Trapper’s team out there, recover the supplies, and return here on the double. We should be able to pull it all back here in two trips.”
“Roger, Elvira,” Cave Troll acknowledged. “3rd Platoon en route.”
Six hours later, supplies collected, Sergeant Major Trapper’s people began installing a missile defense system that would be even more robust than that provided by Xi’s mechs.
They would finally be dug in.
7
Walking Away
Two days had passed, and Lee Jenkins was ready to meet the Chairman. He had considered the offer from every possible angle, and he was ready to accept the consequences of his choice.
An offer of seventy-two fully-cr
ewed, top-of-the-line assault-grade mechs came once in a lifetime. It would infuse the Terran Armor Corps with an overwhelming amount of fighting power. With a full brigade of three battalions under his command, Colonel Jenkins could conduct planet-wide offensives on a scale not undertaken by the Metal Legion in half a century.
It was the chance to raise the visibility of the Legion and everyone in it. This would increase the Legion’s political protection from the types of maneuvers that had already tried to sink Armor Corps.
Counterbalanced against that choice was the safety of his people on the Brick, and possibly even the operational integrity of their ultra-secret mission to uncover the truth of the Jemmin conspiracy. The Vorr had already provided Director Durgan with material assistance, and as far as he could tell, they were genuinely concerned with humanity’s well-being. Their dispute with the Jemmin would undoubtedly come to a head, and they had offered the Metal Legion a chance to protect humanity from the fallout of that inevitable conflict.
The knock at his apartment’s door snapped him back to the moment. Standing to his full height, Jenkins moved to the door and saw a quartet of perfectly identical women wearing the same astronomical cheongsam as their predecessor (or, more likely given the number of women present, their predecessors).
“Chairman Kong is expecting you,” they said in near-perfect unison, parting and gesturing down the hall toward the lift.
Jenkins had thought the Chairman’s unspoken message regarding the identical women had been “nothing here is as it seems,” but if that had indeed been the extent of his subtle missive, why send four of them to his door as a follow-up? Was Kong suggesting he thought Jenkins was too dense to understand him the first time around? Had Jenkins misunderstood the message, or was the Chairman saying something new?
Knowing he was not cut out for a game of such high-level subtlety, Jenkins made his way through the four women who assumed their places at his side and escorted him to the lift. They moved with grace, but also with purpose rarely displayed by simple docents and facilitators. Their musculature was superior to most human women’s, but then again, the residents of Terra Han were generally superior in physique to the rest of the Terran Republic’s citizenry.
They led him to the same aircar platform as he had previously used, where an identical aircar awaited them. Sure enough, the car was crewed by another quartet of the identical women, except this batch wore identical bronze-on-white body-gloves with Falcon Interworks heraldry.
The first four women accompanied Jenkins to the car and entered, while their counterparts gestured for Jenkins to board the vehicle. He did so, and the car sped off toward Ivory Spire One. He took the opportunity to more closely examine the faces of the women in the car.
They each had unique identifying features, like moles and subtle variations in the structures of their ears, but these women were identical in every meaningful respect. Two had barely-visible scars on their cheeks, suggesting at least some martial arts training.
The car pulled to a stop on the platform, and two of the women disembarked before gesturing for Jenkins to do likewise. He stepped off and followed the women to Chairman Kong’s boardroom, where the youthful Chairman awaited in his seat at the end of the table.
Except this time, instead of a suggestively angled chair awaiting Jenkins, not a single chair lined the table aside from the one the Chairman occupied.
The women closed the door behind Jenkins, and the Chairman got straight to the point. “You have enjoyed my hospitality, inspected my offer, and tested my patience, Colonel Jenkins. I hope, for all our sakes, you did not waste our time.”
“I appreciate your hospitality, Chairman,” Jenkins said seriously. “And your offer is one I would be a fool not to accept. It would turn my ragtag fighting force into one which could compete with any ground force fielded in the history of humanity, let alone the Terran Republic.”
“And here comes the inevitable ‘but.’” Kong’s lips parted in a thin sneer.
“But,” Jenkins said with a grave nod, “I have a responsibility to something more than Armor Corps, more than myself, more than the Terran Republic…and even more than humanity.”
“Are you truly that self-interested?” Kong asked, his sneer turning to a condescending smirk. “Would you place your pride above the opportunity to rebuild your beleaguered branch from the ground up using the best material resources available to Terran humanity?”
“No, Chairman.” Jenkins shook his head firmly. “Not to myself, but to the men and women under my command.”
Kong’s eyes narrowed. “Go on, Colonel. The least you can do is explain to me why this effort was somehow more than a colossal waste of my time and energy.”
“We both know those mechs were built using Terra Han’s resources,” Jenkins said stiffly. “They represent a trove of blood and treasure that your government could not be expected to release without certain assurances. Even if I had the information you seek,” he continued, measuring both his tone and his body language as he spoke, “and even if I was inclined to provide it to you, I could not permit that information to be disseminated until my current objectives have been achieved. Terra Han has every right to be proud of Lotus and Orchid Battalions, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to release those assets without a certain degree of…call it ‘oversight’ into how they were deployed.”
“Is a little oversight truly too high a price?” Kong asked, his expression disdainful but his eyes intent.
“Frankly?” Jenkins drew a short breath. “Yes. My Legion is walking a tightrope. We spend every waking minute staring into a political abyss which would consume us for the slightest misstep. We’re surrounded and outgunned, Chairman Kong; that much is true. The smart money would be against us, but if we’re going down, we’d rather do it unified than to be torn apart by internal strife.”
“Are you certain your people would agree?” Kong asked as an unrecognizable expression flashed across his visage.
“More than anything, Mr. Chairman,” Jenkins said with conviction. “Armor Corps would be more than happy to accept whatever material and human assets Terra Han can provide. God knows we can use them,” he said gravely. “But I can’t, in good conscience, agree to something I know I’ll have to renegotiate later. That’s not how the Metal Legion rolls,” he finished, more confident than before that he had made the right choice.
Kong hesitated. He had more to say, but what was equally clear was that he had little hope for his desired outcome.
“Very well, Colonel Jenkins,” the Chairman allowed. “I understand your position, and on some level, I admire you for holding it. But I am certain of one thing above all else,” he said, waving a hand languidly over a panel built into the conference table, causing the door at Jenkins’ back to slide open. “You will come to regret this decision.”
“Thank you for your time, Chairman Kong,” Jenkins said with a nod, turning and leaving Ivory Spire One before making for the nearest spaceport. The courier ship Director Durgan had provided was still on standby, and every second Jenkins spent on Terra Han was time he and his people no longer had.
“Colonel Jenkins,” Thomas Oxblood, the captain and pilot of the Durgan courier ship, greeted him as soon as Jenkins boarded the sleek vessel. “We’re ready to break orbit when you are.”
With a twenty-year service record in the New Britain/Terra Britannia PDF, Oxblood was one of a growing number of servicemen who had gone from a highly-respected military career into private security. Jenkins could understand much of the appeal, given the relative lack of political pressure and maneuvering in the mercenary world.
“Let’s go to New Africa,” Jenkins told him. “I’ve done all I can here.”
“Very good, Colonel,” Oxblood agreed, and three minutes later the ship received clearance to break orbit and proceed to Terra Han’s jump gate. The courier vessel, simply designated DC04 for “Durgan Courier Zero Four,” was among the fastest in the Republic. With acceleration couches capab
le of protecting their occupants from the tremendous gee forces of high-speed interplanetary travel, ships like DC04 were prized possessions since they cut the trips from planet to jump-gate to a fraction of what a standard liner could manage.
Even the Bonhoeffer and other Terran warships were incapable of matching a courier’s speed, but what a courier like DC04 featured in speed it sacrificed in style.
Stripping to his underwear, Jenkins prepared for his ride in the couch. The pressure-suit he donned with Oxblood’s assistance was similar to those employed by fighter pilots, providing external pressure on the softer, fleshier parts of human anatomy into which blood would naturally pool during high-gee acceleration. The suits were anything but comfortable, and were custom-fit to each passenger. Jenkins knew the cost of such a suit and its many attachments was nearly as high as one of his mechs.
“Just relax, Colonel,” Oxblood urged as he prepared an injection which would activate the devices previously installed throughout Jenkins’ body. Some of those devices were essentially stents, designed to keep certain blood vessels from collapsing, while others regulated blood pressure throughout his most sensitive organs (chief among them his brain) to prevent damage during the sustained acceleration.
Other tubes, hoses, and apparatuses were attached to his body through the flight suit’s myriad ports. And in fifteen minutes, he was seated in the couch with a specially-designed mouthpiece clenched between his teeth that would provide him with the oxygen he needed during flight.