Arcfire of Antiquity, page 19
Though Galas was tired, the Targe IV tripled her efforts, transforming her light jog into a ground-eating pace. She’d have pulled back the drone to augment the suit if she’d thought it wise. Better to move slowly than to run into something without seeing it, she reasoned.
She had Raphael continue to crack the code of Daxn’s network, but when he had little luck, she had him go back to the professor’s data.
A few minutes later, he spoke up, “Miss Galas, I’ve discovered something interesting in the research data.”
Galas was down to a slow trot now. Anything to keep her mind off the endless jog was a good thing.
“What’dja find?”
“Well, the professor had not been able to access the Antiquity network like I was able to, at least not in Braex. But it does look like he was able to hack the system locally and use holo-projection.”
Galas chewed on this. “So, he couldn’t access the functionality of the system, but he could see what was available to be seen?”
“Astute observation.”
“Don’t be a smart ass. So, how does this help us? Does it mean that even if you can’t operate the Antiquity system, we can at least see what the professor saw, like in the Sanctum?”
“Or, if I can hack the local system, we can see all that the Sanctum has to offer. See what the professor didn’t see.”
“That would be good, so long as we can get these nodes working before the Delvadr get here.”
“We may not get that chance if we have to activate the node here at Daxn, travel to Xiocic, and then back here to inspect the Sanctum.”
“Yeah, I’ve been worrying about that. Any luck on pulling more clues from the professor’s work?” she asked, tripping and catching herself, and then more cautiously resuming her slow jog, which, in the suit, was still upward of thirty klicks per hour. While not blindingly fast, it was still not a speed at which it was wise to be distractable.
“No,” Raphael replied.
“I was afraid you were going to say that. So, what? We steal a shuttle?”
“An alien craft that we may or may not have an adequate quantity of appendages to operate? Worth a shot…”
Galas laughed. Wingman. Raphael was definitely turning into a wingman.
The pock-marked surface of Skleetrix filled the viewscreen in excruciating detail. Sweat populated her brow, but she dared not show any hint of the terror that was gnawing at her insides. She didn’t let it enter her voice as she called out coordinates to her co-pilot, Ensign Dragoii, “30.005 by 175.129, forward one-five degrees, decay zero-point-one-one.”
“Fade?” Dragoii asked.
“Zero.”
“Strong numbers. You sure you haven’t done this before? You’re not holding out on me, are you?” He looked over at her. “I have money on you screwing this up.”
“Money you’ll never collect if I do,” Galas chided.
“True. But it’s the smart money. Prove me wrong,” he challenged.
“You willing to double that bet, Dragoii?”
“Sure,” he said patronizingly while, she was sure, breathing through the fear erupting in his chest as they drew closer to the surface.
“Then brace for impact. We are good in … five … four … three…”
Galas never got to two. Missiles streamed over the horizon.
“Incoming!” she called out.
“I see them. Deploying countermeasures,”
The gargantuan troop deployment mech hit the lunar surface in a plume of dust and bounced high. This was the hard part that Galas had screwed up so many times in sims. She scanned the HUD, processing angle-of-attack; momentum, fractions of gravity, decay. She was too front-heavy. They were going to bury the nose again when a missile parted the brilliant wall of liquid light and smoke and impacted the mech’s shielding. Besides blowing away chunks of ceramic-alloy armor, it actually corrected the mech’s over-aggressive angle of approach to something she could work with.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kiddin’ me. I live and now I’m going to be completely broke!” Her co-pilot moaned, hitting his forehead with his palm.
“Just shut up and do your job, Dragoii. Lotta chances to die out here.”
“Un-believable. Just, unf—,” expletives poured on as he shook his head. “Did you see that, you silly sonsabitches?!? Yeah, that’s right!” He cried at the HUD, though whether he was speaking to the marines strapped to the sides and underbelly of the mech or to the enemy lobbing missiles at them was unclear.
Galas let it go. She was in the zone now. She’d made it farther than ever before in the sims and now the real work started.
The mech, somewhat resembling an ancient box TV set with stubby, muscular ostrich legs, bobbed along the surface of the moon like an umbrella caught in a windstorm and yet, somehow, continued on. Galas flogged it into submission, guiding, chastising, grunting with exertion and mental exhaustion.
The augmented reality of the SortieNet guided her with crimson lines, parallel and ever-inching closer to one another until she could see the wall turrets ahead. And then the horizon exploded into spears of emerald and amber. The SortieNet color-coded enemy and friendly fire since actual laser fire was invisible to the human eye. A blistering array of light displayed on the viewscreen before her shields erupted into splashes of brilliant light.
“Get us out of here Galas!” Dragoii cried.
“She’ll take it. Keep your panties on.”
“My panties are soiled! I’m gonna need new panties after this.”
“Then the shields are in better shape than your… Shit!” she cried as dark shadows loomed over the walls of the base. “Gunships! Look sharp!”
A barrage of missiles descended like locusts on a mech that Galas hadn’t noticed was running beside her.
An explosion tore through its body and armor, a tragic yard sale of marine pods and appendages scattered in a hundred directions.
Galas cut over into the mech’s previous vector, knowing the gunships would have switched targets and sure enough, a slew of plasma rounds peppered the dusty, pock-marked surface where she’d been only moments before.
“Countermeasures. Now!” she cried and cut back to her previous line. Missiles sliced through the metallic confetti, and whizzed off in drunken spirals, chasing phantom signals into the darkness of space.
Galas blinked and realized the walls were within reach. Gunships flashed overhead on their way to targets that were attainable, leaving the turrets to pick up the dregs. Galas loosed a barrage of plasma and missile fire, and then skittered left again, repeating the process once more before bounding for the wall. The mech exploded off the lunar surface, taking full advantage of the fractional gravity; only this time, she time, she allowed the front to tip over max. Locking on the wall turret closest to the gate, she let loose a hellish torrent, not stopping to watch the carnage.
Screams sounding like excited schoolgirls exploded over her audio—the marines, she thought with thorough satisfaction. The mech continued to tip over until all she could see through the forward viewport was starlight perforating void. The altimeter plunged toward zero and destruction was certain until a flash of geometric shapes rushed up from the bottom of the screen, and the mech was upright and running with the carried momentum.
“You just somersaulted … a transport mech … in microgravity!” he panted out. “No one … has ever … done that before.”
“It was actually a forward flip with a full torso rotation. Hope I didn’t scramble our eggs,” Galas responded, referring to the scores of pods still connected to the mech. She was sure there were a lot of meals lost on that last bit.
“Smoke. Now!” she cried and then initiated the command without waiting for Dragoii to comply.
“Get off or go home, boys!” She yelled over the intercom to the Marines, who were still waiting for an ‘all-clear’ and a command to exit the mech and flee its psychotic pilot.
To their credit, they dismounted within seconds, and a new barrage of light illuminated the interior spaces of the base, followed by explosions and defiant screams.
Galas spun the mech on its heels and lit up the gate that was supposed to have been blown by now by the ahead team. The doors blew outward and a row of mechs leaping burning hulks of their compatriots could be seen charging the opening from the other side. Galas beat them through it going the other way and cranked the reactors over max. There were marines out there, and platoons yet to be deployed.
Overseer Naar slowed the mech to a halt. The river flowed around its feet as it stood in the shallows close to shore. The jungle beyond looked like an impenetrable wall of exploding foliage. He was torn. Between loyalty and liberty. The pain echoed in his mind, clamoring, unceasing, demanding attention. It came from everywhere. Every cell in his body was tortured by the demonia, the fracturing of this present reality by the introduction of another, through it, over it, coming out from inside of it.
The voice of the other murmured over the voices in his mind, coming from somewhere behind or above, near, but its owner was never visible.
“You know what to do. What must be done. Finish the mission. Destroy the woman.”
“But it should have ended with the mech. I have it. I have consumed it. It is part of me,” he reasoned, imploring in a strained, gurgling semblance of the local dialect and pounding his chest for emphasis.
“And yet, you have not been sated. The pain consumes you.”
There was a long pause, and then the mech turned. The other Deathhounds did not at first notice, struggling more with the current than their larger kin. But then, as they came to the river’s shore, they were cautious, not wanting to get ahead of the Overseer, to show that level of disrespect, the kind that had caused the overseer to punish Nub. Nub was brash, overstepped his bounds, and paid for it.
Whatever state of torment he was in at that exact moment, he would endure forever. That was the incentive to follow orders, to obey, to complete the mission. Such was the fate of an insatiate.
Naar bristled under the withheld recompense.
The first voices of concern bubbled hesitantly through the audio, followed by others, more insistent. Soon, an imploring choir assaulted him.
Rockets, lasers, and plasma fire answered them, exploding from the larger Dragoon mech in such massive quantity that it looked as though it was exploding and not just the smaller mechs bunched up against the shoreline. Some scrambled for safety, some stood, too dumbfounded to move. Others stood where they’d remain till rust and rot and the river took them away, utterly vanquished by the surprise betrayal by their leader.
A few petty rockets spiraled off into the sky in response. The Deathhounds, most too honor-bound to actually lock on armaments against their master. Their loyalty, deeper by magnitudes than Naar himself. He felt no pity as the onslaught continued, pouring out his rage and confusion, his bitterness and lostness onto his smaller, weaker brethren. The pack … was broken. Much like the promise, Naar mused darkly.
He turned away. What once had been a Dragoon mech, now a machination of the damned, trudged slowly upriver while corrupted scavengers descended upon the toxic carnage that was once the Deathhounds.
Galas surveyed the temporary shuttle pad. Raphael had performed some AI-wizardry, modifying the Targe IV’s shielding to cloak its electronic signature; essentially matching the low-grade radiation that covered Daxn like a blanket.
Presumably, that radiation was non-toxic and acted as the network superhighway that the middle city of Antiquity had run on. From what he’d relayed to her, it was his estimation that the intruders who’d encamped there had not devised a way to utilize this resource, lest the city would waken and who-knew-what with it.
They appeared to be less interested in the cultural relevance of the ruins and more in its natural resources. Grave robbers, essentially. Not humanoid. More like big praying mantises. Only their heads were small and, actually, in this one way, they were human-like. Their eyes were black, most had beard-like tufts sprouting from the sides of their faces, and on the tops of their heads were a series of ridged plates.
Galas saw no outright militarism amongst their behaviors. They kept no watch. Bodies shuffled from ships to ground machines and back, carting hexagonally shaped containers. This was theft on an industrial scale.
She was unfamiliar with this particular xeno. But then, Epriot had had its hands full for something close to three decades. Who knew how much had been stolen by looters and opportunistic aliens in that time?
A cold boil of anger was growing within her. Righteous anger. She let it simmer while she continued her reconnoiter. There was a craft at the far end of the pad that saw little activity. If she stole it, it might draw attention. Or it might be broken, and that was why it was being left alone.
“Raph. Can you ascertain what’s up with that last shuttle?”
“If you mean, can I hack the looters’ local network? Already done. They’re using a low frequency general network. No encryption. They must think they’re the only ones out here. And perhaps they’re right.”
“Yeah, Raph. Less is more,” she chided.
“Of course, ma’am. It’s broke.”
“Was that so hard?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay, so what do you think is the best course? Can it be fixed? Should we steal one of the others?”
“Oh, you want me to speak now?”
“Dammit, Raph, what’d I say about sarcasm? And passive-aggressive behavior … and being smug?”
“I’m afraid that leaves me little to work with in human interaction.”
“Fair enough,” she conceded.
“If it were up to me, I’d choose the third shuttle from the end. It’s getting close to capacity, and the pilot has not yet shown up to perform pre-flight checks. We could probably sneak aboard between the last of the cargo haulers before the pilot arrives. Also, I’ve been eavesdropping on their conversations. I believe I can approximate the requisite communications to achieve flight authorization. This is not a sophisticated organization.”
“Careful, Raph. I’ve seen some highly violent, not-sophisticated organizations in my time.”
“Fair enough,” he echoed.
Galas responded with a glance heavenward and a quick prayer for inner peace before carrying on. She saw that the shuttle in question was highlighted in the usual fashion within the AR overlay of the battlespace. A ground transport was just entering the airfield. It was autonomous.
What a stroke of luck.
Galas didn’t hesitate but slipped through stacks of cargo and fueling appurtenances to close in on the transport. She then crept in close to its right side, away from the main activity, jogging in a low crouch to match speed. Halfway across the field, the transport broke hard left toward the next shuttle over and Galas stood upright, walking nonchalantly for the remaining ten meters to the shuttle’s open rear cargo hold. And then she strolled right in.
One of the mantis-bodied looters was inside the hold. It rotated its head one-eighty, likely to greet its tardy pilot but was met with a ceramic-alloy, power-augmented fist the size of its head. With a sickening crack, it greeted death instead.
Galas dragged the slack bulk of its body away from the entrance, stuffing it into a cubby, and leaving it for later disposal. Greenish goo oozed quietly from fractures in its exoskeleton. But, other than that, it gave no complaint.
Galas walked through the hold, hitting a highlighted button at the bulkhead which closed the loading ramp, and then proceeded to what she assumed would be the cockpit, but there was no interface for flight activity.
“What is this, Raph? Is this the cockpit or… I don’t know, this could be the lavatory for all I can tell.”
“This is, in fact, the lavatory.”
“Eewww!” she cried, lip curling in disgust.
Shaking all over, she walked out of the room and followed the highlighted cursors in her AR until she slipped into a small cubby to the side of a corridor, which seemed to go nowhere.
“Why would they need a bathroom that big on a transport shuttle? That’s just bizarre.” Galas opined.
“I think that it has to do with their pheromones. Some of the mantid species utilize them as a means of communication. Being confined to small spaces like this, if they couldn’t bathe thoroughly, after a while, it would seem like everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs all the time.”
“Oh. Neat. Is this the cockpit?”
“Indeed. This is the operational interface.”
“Okay. What do I do?”
“Nothing. This one’s on me,” Raphael provided.
A high-pitched squeal that sounded much like over-squelch on a low-frequency radio filled the air. Back-and-forth chatter occurred. There was a pause, and then Raphael broke in, “They have granted us authorization. But it’s to fly to the orbital base, not for further terrestrial activity. We will have to, as you say, ditch them.”
“I like it. I like it, wingman,” Galas said, smiling.
The shuttle lifted off. On the ground, a mantid scuttled toward it, and then tipped over, waving the shuttle off with two left hands before resting its head on the airfield. Galas assumed it was the pilot. Too drunk to function. This was a way-out outpost for these xenos. He’d just done what a lot of people do in their off time on the far outskirts of civilization—get wasted. She probably saved its miserable life. One for one, she thought. That had to count for something.
The shuttle cleared the city and gained altitude at an alarming rate.
“Raph? We’re going north, right?”
“I’m afraid I am no longer in control of the shuttle. Once it broke the local network, there was another system that took over. This one, much more sophisticated.”
