by James Evans
“Typical,” said Atticus quietly as Denmead tried to patch a large wound above his hip. Even with her limited medical knowledge, she could see that it was hopeless. There was just too much damage for her to deal with.
A moment later it appeared, a big agricultural lifter with a low flatbed.
Butler jumped down and together he and Denmead manhandled Atticus onto the flatbed. His clone was heavy and even with two of them it was a struggle. Denmead climbed up and sat with Atticus as Butler gunned the engine and drove quickly back toward the cave system.
“Almost there,” shouted Butler over the noise of the wind, “hang on.”
They pulled into the cave that was serving as a garage and slewed to a halt. The area was suddenly alive as people rushed forward to help. A pair of medics appeared with a stretcher and one knelt beside Atticus, probing at his neck, feeling for a pulse, searching for any sign of life.
“I’m sorry. Governor,” she said, her fingers covered in blood, “Captain Atticus is dead.”
20
“Right, I confess, I’m buggered if I know what we’re going to do now,” Warden admitted, “We need to come up with a new strategy, some way to get into the ship now that the mining lasers are dead. Ideas?”
Warden had gathered his second-in-command, Sergeant Milton, and the two section leaders, Corporals Drummond and Campbell, into a small office in a pre-fabricated building. There were dozens of these buildings around, many completely unused, as if the Deathless were preparing to ramp up their occupation and had built a base capable of handling far more troops than they currently had available. Warden didn’t want to think about that right now.
Predictably, there were blank looks all round until Drummond piped up, “We just want to disable the ship, right, Sir?”
“More or less, yes. It’s their main base of operations and the plan was to board it and destroy it from the inside because we don’t have any weapons capable of guaranteeing the job from the outside.”
“Can we attack the engines then? We’ve got railguns, grenades and some explosives from the mine. We should at least be able to stop them taking off without resupply. They surely won’t have anyone who can repair that sort of damage?”
“Probably not, but keeping it from taking off doesn’t stop them churning out more clones, and this base is tough enough to assault already. If they get numbers in here, we’ll have a hard time winkling them out,” Warden said.
“Yeah, especially now they know we’ve got the balls to bring the fight to them,” Milton said, “it’s not enough Corporal. We need to get inside, but I can’t think of a way to do it with the equipment we’ve got. We’ll never blow a hole through the hull with the explosives we have; they’re just not effective against impact-resistant spaceship hull-plating.”
“I get it, Sarge. I don’t know what to say, then. We can’t blow or cut our way in so we’re screwed, right?” Drummond said.
“We could always trying walking in,” said Campbell with some evidence of trepidation. She’d only been made up to Corporal a few months ago and was still slightly reticent about putting ideas forward. Drummond laughed,
“Yeah, just knock on the door,” said Drummond, laughing, “and then ‘I say old chap, Customs and Excise, we need to inspect your cargo for contraband.’ They’d probably let us waltz right in.”
“Well, why wouldn’t they?,” said Campbell, blushing a little as she pressed on, “We look like them, after all.” She took her helmet off to prove the point, showing her scaled skin and the weird alien features. “We haven’t even repainted the armour, and they’ll be expecting people like us to need to get into the ship.”
“Told you it was time for her to be a Corporal, Sir,” said Milton, beaming proudly, “nice one, Campbell. With your permission, Sir?” she said.
“It’s better than anything I have,” admitted Warden, “but there’s a small problem. They use access cards, just like we do, and they’re keyed to certain parts of the ships. We haven’t found cards for this base or ship so how do we open the ramp?”
“Like this one, Sir?” Campbell said, producing a card and holding it up for them to see before snapping it in half. “Oh, clumsy me. My card doesn’t seem to be working.” She pantomimed waving the card in front of a security camera, and Milton grinned.
“That might work,” said Warden sceptically, “but it’s a hell of a risk. What if they talk to you or demand a password? There are lots of things that can go wrong, and we need none of them to happen for this to work.”
“Stranger things have happened,” muttered Milton, “but do we have any other options? And there’s always a chance that it might work.” Warden sniffed, still doubtful, then nodded.
“Ok, let’s go for it,” he said, “and the best of luck to us all.”
They filed out of the room, Campbell putting her helmet back on.
“Fletcher, unless there’s any activity to worry about, get yourself down here, Campbell needs you,” said Milton.
“Aside from Ten, it’s pretty quiet, nothing close by,” Fletcher said, silhouetted in the gap between two crenellations on the internal side of the wall. She hopped up onto the low wall between the two raised sections, paused for a moment then did a standing jump forward. She dropped to one knee as she absorbed the impact of the landing.
The noise was not subtle and Warden wondered if it was worth pointing out that there were perfectly good stairs only a few metres away. Probably not, he thought, and at least now they knew the armour could survive a leap like that. It might come in handy at some point.
Campbell and her team of Deathless-clone Marines moved out, walking beside the ship toward a clearly marked, but currently very closed, access ramp. The rest of the Marines crept forward, positioned well back and ready for an assault.
When they reached the yellow and black markings striped rectangle painted on the hull, Campbell pulled out her access card, looking at it as if she were amazed to find it broken. She tried it optimistically on the lock, and nothing happened. She tried it again, then she pressed a button and leaned toward a camera, gesturing with the card, one half flapping uselessly.
Surely this wouldn’t work? They’d want to speak to her, to confirm who they were letting in and probably reprimand her for breaking her card. Warden was just starting to feel it was a waste of time when a warning buzzer sounded the ramp began to open, showing blinking lights along its edge. Lasers projected an outline of its footprint as it lowered, lest some wet-behind-the-ears recruit got flattened on their first day. All very safe, very sensible.
Campbell stood back and waited, her impatience showing. A Rupert came down the ramp first, pistol drawn and held casually at his side, and for a moment it looked like Campbell was going to be questioned. Then the officer walked past, leading three short columns of Lizardmen. They jogged away, heading for the gatehouse, off to deal with the intrusion it seemed. Campbell stood to one side, waiting for them to clear the ramp.
Then the Rupert stopped, turned back and walked over to Campbell, clearly asking something as he went. Campbell held up the broken card in response and shrugged as if to ask what she could do about it. That didn’t satisfy the officer, and it became agitated, yelling at the column of troops to stop.
A whole platoon, standing to attention, eyes front, while they waited for their commander to rejoin them.
Campbell asked.
Campbell tapped the side of her head, as if there was a problem with her communicator, leaning forward slightly and bringing up her hand as if she was going to remove her helmet. The officer leaned forward too.
Then Campbell’s left hand reached out and cl
utched the back of his head, his eyes going wide for as long as it took for Fairbairn-Sykes to punch up under his jaw and into his brain.
“Fletcher. Take them,” she ordered as she wiped the dagger on the front of Rupert’s uniform, using her grip on his head to keep him upright until her knife had been sheathed.
Fletcher complied, walking straight up to the Sergeant who stood to attention at the front of the platoon. It looked up at her, waiting for her to speak. Instead, she activated the blades and claws on her armour and grabbed his head with one massive glove, crushing it like an eggshell. Then she stepped forward and tore the throat out of a trooper in the next rank.
The Marines opened up at that point, silenced pistols spitting at the confused enemy troopers as they struggled to work out what was going on and how to respond.
Campbell moved forward throwing the corpse of the officer into the horrified ranks of his troops, her team in motion behind her, closing quickly. Their power armour put them in charge of the situation. She punched one trooper full in the face, not holding back on the suit's capabilities, and the front of his skull just crumpled around her fist.
Then her team fell on them, snapping necks and slitting throats. A Troop’s suppressed weapons took care of any who were quick enough or far enough from the front line to aim a weapon. It was a brutal slaughter. Fletcher had sliced her way through the front ranks after killing the Sergeant, the blades on her forearms parting more than one head from its shoulders.
Any that were quick enough to avoid her bladed arms felt instead the steely grasp of the claws and whatever limb they gripped was crushed in a heartbeat, crippling them. Fletcher killed them as quickly and efficiently as possible; there was no need for them to suffer, despite the fact they had attacked a peaceful colony that housed civilians children.
In seconds, they were all down and the area was suddenly quiet again.
“Strip weapons and ammunition,” Warden ordered as Campbell’s team moved back toward the ship.
Fletcher took the lead, charging up the ramp, and straight for the door opposite. The door lock went green as soon as she slapped the gauntlet of her suit on the pad, then the double doors slid open and she barrelled on.
From inside the ship, Warden could see it was built on a different scale to the dropships they’d stormed before. It was a pity they weren’t capturing it but a ship this size, on the ground, was just too vulnerable to orbital bombardment. There was probably a wealth of equipment in here that they could use in Fort Widley but, after the quarry, he was reluctant to try another unauthorised side mission.
“Lance Corporal Price, Richardson, Jenkins, Barber, I want you to hang back. Richardson, get your drones out, you too Jenkins. I want visuals on this ship as soon as possible. Once that’s done, Lance Corporal, you’re to visit any location near this ramp we can loot for useful gear. Nothing we can’t fit in a vehicle, if Ten hasn’t already destroyed them all. We don’t have much space in the rovers, but we lost half of Section 3 at the quarry, so see what you can find. Power armour is a priority and heavy weapons. You know what we need.”
A message from Milton popped up in his HUD,
Updates began to populate the map, showing the layout of the ship and the disposition of the team.
Warden had almost finished clearing the starboard cargo bay when Fletcher got contact. She steamed into a shuttle bay on an upper deck and came under immediate fire from a dozen Deathless troopers. Campbell was already moving to provide support, but Fletcher would be on her own for the moment; Warden certainly couldn’t get there himself. He checked the feed from her suit and saw her charge into the ambush, head on.
Fletcher fired her heavy machine gun on full auto as she closed the distance with the enemy squad that was sheltering behind a pile of crates. That forced their heads down - big mistake. She dropped the weapon as she leapt over the crates, crashing down amongst the middle group. A Rupert in scout armour fired his pistol ineffectually into her chest, the rounds pinging from it like stones skimmed across an icy lake. Fletcher grabbed his head with both of her massive gauntlets and twisted viciously, snapping the neck as the synthetic muscle fibres in her power armour augmented the already considerable strength of her clone.
Bereft of a user, the Rupert’s power armour went limp. There was a spray of gore as the neck tore and Fletcher wrenched the officer’s head free, holding it in one clawed gauntlet and the body in the other.
She roared then hurled the body toward the group on the left. They scattered like startled birds, and she turned to the other group. Using the helmeted head as an improvised club, she laid about them, gore spraying across the terrified Deathless soldiers. Each blow crushed another skull or caved in a chest.
Bloody hell, thought Warden, Marine Fletcher might be in need of some serious anger management training. Those poor buggers were going to wake up screaming if they redeployed, he was sure. He switched off the feed, confident that she had it all in hand and not a little disturbed. Maybe she was spending too much time with Marine X, listening to his theories on psychological warfare, and Warden made a mental note to discuss it with Milton.
Warden flicked away from Fletcher’s video feed then spent a few minutes rummaging around the docking bay, flagging it as a hot zone for equipment to be pilfered before jogging off to help the others. Campbell and her team had done an excellent job leading the assault and most of the kills were down to them. Even where they weren’t solely responsible, they had acted as bullet sponges to allow their colleagues to flank the Deathless and mop them up.
The Marines had moved with great speed and aggression and, in only a short time, they had taken a solid hold on the ship. They worked back, clearing any Deathless soldiers they had missed, then Warden set Campbell and her team to begin collecting anything of value. Their power armour meant carrying a crate of rifles was a one person job rather than a team effort. The rest of the Troop split up, making sure every room was cleared and setting charges in vital areas.
As each charge was set, they appeared on the tactical map in the HUD. They had identified the main power plant, engines and bridge and they mined them all. It might not be enough to destroy the ship, but they would surely render it inoperable for an extended period. There were large fabrication plants concealed within the hull, and the configuration of the ship was almost entirely based around turning raw material into supplies and new fabrication plants. It was a factory, in other words, designed solely to act as a base on an alien world, churning out base-building kits and self-assembling forts.
Most of the troop had found something to take with them; small arms, ammunition, grenades and a lot of potential intelligence. They had so much loot, in fact, that Warden wasn’t actually sure they’d be able to get it all out.
Ten joined them as they were piling their ill-gotten gains below the loading ramp.
“I’ve arranged the parting gift for our guests, Sir, as ordered.”
“Noted. Flagged on the tactical map?”
“Of course, Sir. All ship-shape and Bristol fashion. Anything else I could be doing now?”
“Do you think there are stragglers out there?” Warden asked, gesturing at the ruined buildings toward the gate and the relatively intact areas further away from it.
“Nah, I think they mostly stuck there heads up, like meerkats.
Suicidal, meerkats. I’m pretty sure we got them all.”
Warden glanced up at him, then back at the growing pile of loot.
“We need vehicles, Marine X. I’m loathe to leave behind anything we could use and even though we lost people at the mine, the rovers aren’t big enough to let us take this lot.”
Ten eyed the pile of gear.
“There’s some stuff in that building over there we should grab as well. There were a bunch of head sheds in there having a nice chat about their plans for New Bristol. I grabbed the obvious bits and pieces, but there might be more in there you’ll want. I didn’t bring the building down, either, just for you, Sir.”
“Well, that’s very generous of you Ten. Now, you’ve seen more of this place than we have, any promising vehicles I might want to know about?”
Ten grinned, “I think I may have seen a couple worth pinching, Sir. If I could borrow a couple of techs and a few drivers?”
Warden raised an eyebrow at that, “If you can get me proper vehicles, Ten, you can take all the techs and Marines you need.” He ran that back in his mind and then amended it, “Within reason. All the Marines, within reason.”
Ten winked at him as he walked off to pick a team, “Right you are, Sir.”
21
“Let’s come to order, ladies and gentlemen,” said Denmead when the last of the councillors had arrived. The temporary space they had been using for meetings in Fort Widley had started to take on the appearance of a more permanent chamber. Most recently, a coffee machine had appeared in a nook that had been carved specifically for the purpose.
“This is an update meeting only,” said Denmead, “so that we can apprise you all of the latest discoveries.”
“What do you mean by an ‘update meeting’?” asked Councillor Louise Dunbar, face schooled to the bland expression for which she was well known, “Are we not to discuss the situation as well?”
