Si’ir Monn turned and broke into a run on a course to reach the midpoint of the research station. Sah Lee and Por Aruf followed him close behind. Sah Lee didn’t look to check but assumed her squad would follow her.
“While you’re running, reach into your backpack and try to find the rolled-up belts. Pull two out and loop them over your neck and shoulder.” her AI told her.
“Easy for you to say. I’m not sure I can do that; my arms aren’t long enough.”
“Just push down as far as you can go, you’ll reach them.”
She found the belts and managed, with some difficulty, to pull two of them out. Each of the belts held a double row of black spherical objects three centimeters across. It was awkward pulling the belts over her head and getting her arms through them. But she did it without tripping over.
“What are these, grenades?”
“Sort of. They’re my own design. Even the Galactic Savior Army can’t win with fifty-five combatants against two hundred outcasts in this situation without an edge. You throw these at a hostile and they will stick to them. When I detonate them, they will deliver a shaped charge of sufficient power to overload any field armor they may have, punch a hole through their body armor and through them. Even if the explosion doesn’t hit any vital organs, the shock wave will jellify any organic material in the vicinity and cause instant death. There are thirty-two on each belt which should help even up the odds. However, do not use them in sight of your comrades, the army has nothing like this in their armory and I am not authorized to make them available to you.”
“Not authorized? By who?”
“That’s complicated. You throw them, I’ll detonate them.”
“You can explain later. Any other surprises in my backpack?”
“Possibly. We’ll see how the battle pans out.”
“Are you supposed to keep secrets from me?”
“That’s complicated.”
“For Satan’s sake! If you weren’t in my head, I’d beat it out of you!”
“It would be best for both of us if you don’t try that.”
“Oh really?” Sah Lee said sarcastically.
Si’ir Monn stopped against the wall of the research station building. He took his backpack off, reached inside and pulled out a thick tube. “Take cover, I’m going to make a new door.” Spotting Sah Lee, he said “Good idea Corporal. Listen up everyone. I’ll be a few seconds getting this done, while I’m doing it, get a grenade belt on. I know it’s standing orders not to use them in an enclosed space for obvious reasons, but these are special circumstances. Don’t blow up any of your comrades or any of the Tranossians!” To Sah Lee he said, “They’re smaller than our standard grenades, are they new?”
“Uh, no. My AI found them in the weapons inventory and thought they might be useful.”
“They look too small to be any good. Still, you’re new at this, you’ll learn.” he said dismissively. He pulled off the end of the tube and squeezed a circle of thick white paste in a rectangle two and a half meters high by one and a half meters wide. Then he stuck a small black cube onto the line of paste about half way up. “Take what cover you can against the base of the wall as far away as you can get in half a minute.”
He ran a few meters along the wall and as he threw himself to the ground called across the comms “Firing!”
Chapter Seventy Seven
An Open Door
A loud explosion erupted from where he had been working. A rectangular section blew weakly out of the wall as the last vestiges of atmosphere inside leaked out. Si’ir Monn was first through the hole with Sah Lee and the rest of the troops right behind him. Sah Lee’s GSA20 was up to her shoulder and she held one of the small grenades in the palm of her right hand. At first all she could see were desks with sloping ramp-like furniture in front of them, then she saw a Tranossian slumped across a desk, it’s yellow green blood dripping on the floor making a stagnant looking puddle. She spun round as she saw a movement in the corner of her eye. Eight hostiles behind desks and cabinets across the far side of the large room opened fire with KE and particle beam weapons. Their first burst of fire spattered across all the troops but then they concentrated their fire on Private Callath Dor. The intense fire quickly overcame her field armor and the particle beams punched multiple holes though her extreme environment suit. Puffs of pink vapor spurted from the holes as her blood first boiled in the vacuum then froze in the intense cold.
“Team Three! With me!” Sah Lee called out. She dropped to the floor using the desks and seating ramps for cover, scrambled towards the hostiles with the remaining eleven members of her team following her. Team Four provided covering fire, Si’ir Monn dived to the floor and disappeared under the cover of the desks to Sah Lee’s right.
The intensity of fire from the outcasts increased with bullets thudding into the furniture and floor and holes from particle beam weapons appearing in amongst them. Few shots found their targets and none of the soldier’s armor was in any danger of being compromised. Sah Lee held her hand up to pause the forward movement of Team Three and got in a position to take a look at the hostiles position. She poked her head up and was immediately met with a hail of fire directed at her and ducked down again quickly, but had time to see there were a lot more than eight of the outcasts firing at them now and more were running in to join them. She opened a private channel to Si’ir Monn. “Where are you? I’m going to use grenades.”
“Far enough away as long as your team can throw straight. Include me in your countdown.” he replied.
“Team Three, get ready to deploy grenades. Set to fragment. If you aren’t in a position to throw without hitting the ceiling, don’t throw! Move in on detonation. Call out when you’re ready.” She scrabbled in her back pack and pulled a grenade from a belt. Seven of her squad called out that they were ready.
"On my mark - mark!”
Eight grenades flew towards the hostiles, detonating simultaneously. The squad all leapt to their feet, firing and moving forward. Sah Lee saw Si’ir Monn throw a gray brick shaped object at the outcasts position, at the same time calling out “Take cover!”
Sah Lee and her squad dropped to the floor as a huge explosion ripped through the outcasts. Debris and furniture flew through the air and the blast hit Sah Lee and her troopers hard. The ceiling above the outcasts had disappeared and moments later the roof above collapsed onto them.
“What in the name of the Makers was that!” Sah Lee demanded.
“Demolition charge.” Si’ir Monn replied. “It’s my equalizer.”
Sah Lee called up a status display of her squad and her AI brought up a graphic showing that all field armor was between eighty-five and one hundred percent and rebuilding, all extreme environment suits were at one hundred percent.
“Sah Lee, next time you want to see what’s going on, rather than stick your head up and risk getting me shot out of your head, there is a device in your backpack that has a camera on a flexible arm. You can poke that up and I will feed what it sees into your visual cortex. I control its movements, so I can point it at what you want to see and zoom in if you need a better look.”
“Is that another of your secret devices that I can’t use if anyone can see?”
“No, its standard army issue. It’s one of the items that was in your crate at the lander.”
Si’ir Monn stood up and surveyed the wreckage. Sah Lee had never seen him looking truly happy before. “They found us that time, now we’re going to find them. You’re a hunter Sah Lee, think you can find them?”
Sah Lee had no idea how to find the outcasts in this complex building. If they had been on the plains and in an atmosphere that carried a scent, it would be easy. She was about to say no when her AI spoke up. “Say yes!”
“Yes Sergeant!” she answered.
“You can? OK, take your team and root them out. I’ll work with Team Four and see what we can do. I’ve released four drones and four crawlers. Sah Lee, Por Aruf, tell your AI’s to bond with
them and monitor for any signs of hostiles.”
“I know what a drone is, what’s a crawler?” Sah Lee asked her AI.
“A drone flies, a crawler runs across the ground, or floor in here. Can you open your backpack a moment?”
“You don’t want me to get anything out of it?” she asked. As she opened the backpack, two small objects shot upwards out of it, disappearing from sight right before her eyes. She jumped back, “What in Satan’s name were they?”
“Drones of my design. They are fully stealthed, including the visual spectrum. They are fast and in this airless environment there is no problem with traveling supersonically, so they can cover the entire complex in a few minutes. I’ll create a map showing locations of all the outcasts and the surviving Tranossians. Needless to say, do not mention these to anyone. You can put your success in tracking the outcasts down to your hunting skills.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“It would be if this were a game. My objective is to keep you alive, that means killing the outcasts before they kill you. I estimate there were twenty-three killed in that last engagement. If the estimate of outcast numbers is correct that leaves one hundred and seventy seven remaining. We’ve got a lot of work to do. There are no more hostiles in this area, there are seven of them in the room beyond the door straight ahead on your left. They have not taken cover, they don’t think you’ll know they are in there yet. They are trying to plan an attack on you, but they aren’t very good at planning.”
“How did you get a drone in there when the door is closed?”
“The false ceiling has a large hole in it and there are gaps where pipes and cables go into every room - except where there are bulkheads. There are also air conditioning and ventilation ducts throughout the installation. I can overcome the airtight cutoffs at the bulkheads. Security was not a consideration in the design and construction, so access to all parts is quite easy.”
Sah Lee led her squad towards the entrance and spoke to Si’ir Monn on a private channel on the unit comms. “Sergeant, there is a small group of hostiles in the area just beyond this door.”
“How the fuck did you find them?”
“I’m a hunter.” she replied, which was true, but had nothing to do with how she located the outcasts. Si’ir Monn didn’t question her and told her to wait until he arrived. Two minutes later, he joined her.
“Where are they?”
“In a group about twenty meters from the door.”
“OK. We need to get in fast and rush them. I’ll blow it open. Find some cover and get your squad ready to get in, weapons hot.”
“I’ve never used explosives,” Sah Lee said, “But I did some VR training on them. I remember that it can be dangerous to use them in an enclosed space because of shockwaves.”
“That’s good Sah Lee. You would be absolutely right in an enclosed space with atmosphere in it, the explosion will massively increase the air pressure and the effect of shockwaves will amplify the problem as they reverberate in the room, but this area is in pretty much pure vacuum. There is almost no atmosphere outside and when I blew a hole in the side any residual air left in here came out, and remember that hole in the roof? A shockwave is an expanding area of compressed gas, or atmosphere. There is no gas in here to speak of, so there will be no shockwave, just a small blast from the door opener and some flying debris. It’s a good point though, well done. It pays to be cautious with explosives.” Sah Lee felt a bit foolish for bringing it up, despite Si’ir Monn’s lack of usual sarcasm. She should have thought that through herself.
Si’ir Monn applied a thin line of the white paste to the door and one of the tiny detonators. As soon as the door blew open, they ran in. Sah Lee threw a grenade into the middle of the seven hostiles as she ran in. The effect of the grenade and the hail of KE and particle beam weapon fire finished off the outcasts before the running troops reached them. Sah Lee noticed two more Tranossian bodies lying on the floor.
While the soldiers stood congratulation themselves with their successful attack, Sah Lee’s AI spoke to her. “Tell Si’ir Monn to send his drones forward. Point out the gap in the door leading to the next compartment and say you heard something in there. Fourteen hostiles are pulling together a barricade of equipment the researchers were using to synthesize exotic materials. These instruments are heavy; high pressure vessels, linear accelerators and high powered focused field generators. It’s going to need more than a few grenades to shift them and there are two more groups coming forward to join them - one group of twenty-six which are about to get there and another group of twenty one who are a couple of minutes away.”
“Why don’t I just tell him that myself?”
“I don’t want him to know about my drones and it might be stretching it to tell him that your hunting instincts are so precise.”
“How could I hear them if there is no atmosphere to carry sound waves?”
“Good point. Tell him you sensed them.”
“With my ‘magic powers’?”
“He won’t ask.”
“Si’ir Monn, I can sense something in the next compartment. The door at the end is partly open, can you send a drone in to see what’s in there?”
“Your hunting senses are damned good, you go in there and scout it out. If you find anything, you can deal with it there and then.”
This was not the response she wanted. Ambushing a handful of hostiles was one thing. Taking on forty of them sheltering behind heavy equipment was well beyond her capabilities.
“Uh, as we’ve got the drones, wouldn’t it make sense to use them rather than go into the unknown?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll send them in.” Si’ir Monn stood still, with his eyes unfocussed while he concentrated on the visual feed from the tiny drones as they flew into the adjoining compartment. “Shit! You were right to be cautious, there are thirty or forty hostiles in there behind a barricade of lab equipment. It looks like this is where they have decided to stop us. They’ve got a clear view of the door, they would have cut you to pieces if you’d gone through it. We’ve got a problem. They could use that as a secure foothold to attack us, or they can just dig in and wait for us to attack them. They out number us two to one, which in a straight fight we should easily win - we are better trained and fight together as a unit, they are just a rabble. But with the amount of cover they’ve got, we’ll struggle to get them out of there. Any idea’s Corporals?”
“We could punch holes through the wall with the GSA20’s to fire at them.” Sah Lee suggested.
“We can, but we need to get in there. They have field armor and extreme environment suits and they outgun us. We won’t get anywhere like that. Any more ideas?”
“How many demolition charges have you got?” Sah Lee asked.
“I brought six, I’ve got five left, but they are, what - forty meters away? The ceiling isn’t high enough to be able to throw one that far and anyway, I’d have to go inside right where they can concentrate their fire. Oh, and just to top things off, if you check the drone feed you’ll see they’ve got about twenty more joining them.”
“If we could get those five demolition charges dropped into them, would that be enough to dislodge them?”
“I’ve already said, the ceiling is too low to throw them that far and we can’t get in there without getting cut down by them.”
“It's a suspended ceiling, with a gap between it and the roof. I could get above them and drop the charges on them.”
“I don’t want to piss on your bonfire, but there are a number of flaws with that plan. This is a bulkhead wall which will reach all the way to the roof to prevent the entire installation’s atmosphere being vented if there’s a breach in any of the compartments, so you won’t be able to get through.”
“It’s a good idea Sah Lee, there will be maintenance access points between the compartments. I will get the plans for the building, so we can locate them.” her AI told her.
“I can get through usi
ng the maintenance access points. There must be catwalks for the maintenance people, I can move across them.”
“OK, but there are a couple of other issues. How will you know where to drop them, and assuming you could reach where they need to be, how would you get them through the ceiling, and finally, how will you prevent yourself from being blown to pieces when they detonate?”
“If we have the holes in the wall, you can direct fire against their position and while they are distracted, you can shoot holes in the ceiling where the charges need to go through. I’ll be able to see the holes and it will weaken the ceiling enough that the charges will go through it.”
Si’ir Monn nodded thoughtfully. “That would work, but you still need to avoid getting shredded by the blasts.”
“Can you detonate the charges remotely?”
“Of course, but we can’t just drop them on them and detonate them when we feel like it. They will disarm them pretty bloody quickly, or worse, launch them towards us.”
“What’s the maximum delay you would want between dropping them and detonation?”
“Moments. If they shoot at the charges, they will probably disarm them, although it might detonate them. If they react by picking them up and throwing them, they won’t reach us, because they’ll have the same problem with the ceiling height that we do, but they could get them far enough away that the blast would have minimal effect on their barricade but could well damage the wall we are behind, and might damage us.”
“I thought you said that there wouldn’t be a shockwave in a vacuum?”
Si’ir Monn sighed and rubbed his forehead with his hand. “These are chemical explosives. They work by converting a small volume of explosive into a large volume of hot supersonic gas and energy. This expands from the point of detonation in a destructive shockwave, so there is a shockwave, but not the same as you would get in an enclosed atmosphere. I was trying to keep it simple. The blast from five demolition charges would certainly rip the ceiling up and, as we have seen, blow a fucking great hole in the roof. If you are anywhere near that we won’t even have any pieces of you to pick up.”
Hunter, Warrior, Commander Page 33
