But with only a moment remaining for her, Krajenar double checked her HUD. Everything looked right. Ahead, the faint glow of the bridge’s ink revealed itself.
Sucking in a final breath and closing her eyes, she headed straight for the glowing sphere.
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The buzzing sound always present during bridge transitions vibrated through Krajenar’s body. Instead, this time, it felt a hundred times faster and louder.
Then, in an instant, the sound of rushing air replaced the buzzing. She opened her eyes just as the ink retreated. It gave way to an alien landscape, which she saw from the perspective of an upward, slowing trajectory. Icons of her team reappeared on her HUD. She also spotted them through her visor, each on a similar but somewhat divergent vector.
One by one as their upward momentum faded, they snapped open the glider pads that extended from their suits between their legs and arms. Each hung in midair for a split second before gravity drew them in once more.
As landing approached, Krajenar hoped her hasty training would be enough to allow a smooth landing. It wasn’t, and so the touchdown was rough. She tumbled, slid on slippery, saturated muck, and then rolled downslope on her back to a stop in a bog. Feeling more foolish than injured, Krajenar was quick to stand and retract the now-muddy glider pads. She ducked into the swamp brush and saw that Sceytera hung low but large on the horizon. Its gaseous atmosphere reflected a small portion of the powerful rays of the system’s soon-to-set central star. She guessed this was Sekkalan but would have confirmation soon enough.
The team’s leader, a female named Captain Garo, acted fast after landing and sent an encoded burst-link comm transmission that marked their rally point in a nearby cluster of thorny moss trees. Gathering in the mushy thicket, tactical data started pouring into everyone’s HUDs as the well-trained assault team located enemy soldiers, buildings, and vehicles.
Krajenar saddled up next to Garo as instructed; the only pair to keep so knotted together. Over their whisker-laser circuit, the Captain said, “I have three buildings of size, two with significant EM signatures. I have to think one of them could be a suitable target.”
Krajenar nodded. “We have three objectives here. Find the captives and determine their status. Find an access port and give me time to access their network. Determine grid coordinates and ensure encrypted transmission home. Everything else is secondary.”
“Sergeant Z’eff already has coordinates from a star reading and Sceytera-lock,” Captain Garo said. “We’re on Hell itself. Sekkalan, Zkatzin Province. It’ll be marsh glades as far as the eye can see.”
“Get him moving,” Krajenar said. “He’s to withdraw immediately with that position data and be prepared to transmit it ASAP along with any other intel we’ll send to him.”
Garo transmitted her orders to Z’eff and an escort to withdraw from the area of operations where they would wait in concealment to send a burst transmission to Mokisia. She cut back to Krajenar’s circuit. “I’ve also sent two others to sweep around the transitory bridge exit. Maybe we can catch sight of entering captives. Negative release attempts, just observation.”
“All right, observation only, no engagement,” Krajenar said. “Network access is next. Let’s find a comm building.”
Garo conferred with the remaining troops on the team-wide channel. During descent, one of the snipers, Corporal Dochol, had apparently spotted a building with at least a dozen satellite dishes on its roof. “Where is it from here?” Garo asked.
“About five hundred meters north,” Dochol said.
“Good work, that’s the one. Let’s get a vantage,” Krajenar said.
“You’re with me, Major Attazahal,” Garo said. “The rest of you fly solo. Go dark, cold, and quiet.”
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After about an hour of dodging patrols and creeping through mushy thickets of moss trees and tall grasses, Krajenar and the team gathered near their objective. Their electronics specialist, Sergeant Harec, gazed at the building with thermal binoculars. “Doors entering the inner structure. Left and right,” Harec said. “Warm shapes too. Sekkalans. Moving.”
Garo hissed. “Too much traffic. You’ll need time inside, Major. Any chance of a wireless connection?”
Krajenar shook her head. “We assumed they would have too much protection. We configured everything on entry via hard line access, courtesy of a former Sekkalan infiltrator. I need to plug in directly.”
“Sergeant Harec,” Garo said, “do you have an alternate for me?”
“Affirmative, Captain. Got a vehicle bay down the road a bit. It’s dark and seems unattended. I doubt anyone will notice any damage right away. Looks quiet down there.”
“We’re inbound,” Garo said. “Rijun, Dochol, you have sniper detail. Harec, scout ahead. Get us access by the time we get there.”
Without further delay, the troops headed out. Garo and Krajenar jumped down a small cliff in front of them and waded ankle-deep across a pond full of tall grasses. On the other side, they hid behind several boulders. Garo checked the area ahead with a wrist scanner. “Picking up signatures.”
“Got it too,” Corporal Dochol said. “On visual now. Stay put everyone. It’s an omni-directional motion sensor. I’ll jam it.” Dochol loaded a sonic pulse round into the chamber of his multi-barrel sniper rifle and aimed at a saucer-shaped disc mounted atop a metal pole. He fired, sending a silent, focused pulse of high-frequency sound waves at the sensor. Harmless to most living creatures, the sonic rounds were toxic to electronics. “That’s a hit. It’ll sleep for a while.”
“Good shooting, Corporal. Signature’s gone. We’re clear,” Garo said.
“On the move,” Harec whispered.
Ahead, the vehicle building and others nearby sat on pack soil. Between it and the Mokisiaans stood a thick field of marsh grasses that tapered to a muddy slope leading to the complex. A few clumps of moss trees added some measure of concealment. Judging from Harec’s icon on her HUD, Krajenar guessed the soldier was already at the muddy slope and ready to sprint ahead to their objective.
Not far behind, Garo led Krajenar to one of the moss tree thickets. “Come on, let’s head to the edge of the slope,” Garo said, whispering into her comm circuit. Krajenar nodded and they crouched forward through the grass. In the darkness, the telltale red flashes from the silent firing of a tranquilizer gun in the distance were easy to spot. Before Krajenar could react, Garo yanked her to the ground and lay on top of her. She pointed her pulse rifle in the direction of the red flashes.
Whispering, Garo said, “Talk to me, Harec.”
“Sorry boss, they came out of nowhere. Didn’t want to make a racket, so I tranked them. I’m at the garage. Area looks clear, but give me a few.”
Garo slinked off Krajenar and suggested that they low crawl up the muddy slope while Harec continued his work at the garage. As they neared the edge of the grass, they came upon the unconscious guards.
“Probably out to check on the malfunctioning motion sensor,” Krajenar said.
Garo slung her pulse rifle over her back and unsheathed her combat knife. She looked around and then said, “I think they’ll be okay here.”
“Okay for what?”
Before Krajenar finished speaking, Garo sliced through the neck of one of the guards. “Okay to leave the bodies here. There’s enough concealment from the grass and we are a good enough distance from the complex.”
Garo turned back and leaned toward the other guard. She sliced through his neck. Before putting the knife away, she wiped the blood off on the dead soldier’s uniform.
Krajenar took a deep breath and slinked ahead, waiting for Garo to finish her work. Once she joined Krajenar, the two took a moment to view the area before moving forward. They slithered up the muddy slope.
“Status, Harec,” Garo said.
“I’ve just about unhinged a door on the west side, toward the back. With your help, we can lift it and you can gain entry.”
“Alright, we’re movi
ng up.”
With that, Garo and Krajenar stood and ran across the pack soil to the garage. They headed to Harec’s position. Once there, Krajenar helped Harec to lift a side door off its hinges while Garo stood guard. After the door was out of the way, Krajenar and Garo slipped inside the building.
The structure appeared strange in every way. Crude, open wire-ways and panels were mounted everywhere. Cable runs and steel plates seemed to be the only ornamentation. The entire structure stood out as one of pure functionality.
As they moved down a dark corridor, Garo pointed at something. “Look, a repair bay. They’d have a hard dock there.”
Krajenar nodded, but said, “Likely just for making a local connection to interface with vehicle data. It’s unguarded, so it’s not important. The significant information will be deeper inside. We need to get at their main network. It will likely be guarded.”
“The farther in we go the harder it will be to get out, Major. My team can’t keep the window open all day.”
“I understand,” Krajenar said, weighing the risk. “But we’re already in deep, and we haven’t reached our goal. Mokisia needs us and…I can’t do this alone. It is our only chance to get at them and our world is worth the risk.”
Garo clenched her strong jaw, nodded, and then said, “We go deeper then.”
They moved onward, down a dim hallway that became darker with each cautious step. When they came to a blind corner, Garo peeked around it. She leaned back and whispered into her comm channel to Krajenar. “I think we found something. Two guards. Must be protecting something important.”
“Good bet. We enter there.”
“Too far for tranks, plus they’re armored. Permission to engage?”
Krajenar took a slow, deep breath, and then exhaled. “Yes, Captain. Quick and as quiet as possible.”
Garo prepared her pulse rifle, then sent a brief text message to Harec: “Contact with two. Engaging.” A final check and then she rounded the corner in battle mode. She fired once. A Sekkalan guard dropped, a heat-hole through the middle of one eye.
Garo aimed toward the second guard, but he exploded into motion. Faster than the normal Angorgal could perceive and understand, the Sekkalan burst from dead calm to ready-to-kill mode. Instinct blended with combat programing, giving the thing unprecedented reflexes. Plasma energy hammered down on Garo, burning through her bodysuit and tearing into her flesh. She toppled to the ground. Death consumed her.
Drugs smashed through Krajenar’s shock at the sight. Her implant and chemical supplements stimulated combat responses drawn from long-ago training memories. She brought her pulse rifle to bear, and fired without hesitation at the enemy, the monster. Multiple plasma bolts sliced into and through the second guard. It hissed as it collapsed into a pile of smoking debris.
Once the shooting stopped, the scent of burnt flesh mixed with the smoke of electrical fires in the corridor. The whining sound of powering down rifle energy cores hummed through the area as well. Then, more noises registered in Krajenar’s ears.
Alarms. Klaxons everywhere.
Krajenar cursed.
Her only hope was continued surprise. She rushed forward and blasted open the door without a second thought. Lunging through the breach, her eyes dashed around the room.
Seated, and clustered together along a wall formed by vertical metal beams and partial plating, four Sekkalans gazed at her. Their faces void of expression, all of them stared with dim, pulsing red eyes. Recessed into deep chairs, they each sat plugged into an array of wiring. Some of it ran to nearby hardware, while other wires merged and trailed across the floor and up into a conduit along the ceiling.
Krajenar fought the urge to kill them, but her interrogator voice intervened by raising one question after another. Who, how, what? Why? Her eyes followed the conduit overhead. It ran to her right and disappeared into the blackness behind several metal girders.
Below it, a bay opened up beyond a row of vertical metal beams. Krajenar glanced at the four inert Sekkalans, and then stepped to her right. Inside the bay, she saw three lengthy parallel rows of open metal containers.
Krajenar gasped.
The containers looked like coffins. A few stood empty, but naked, unconscious Angorgals…with blue chests, filled the multitude of others. These were Mokisiaans, just like Krajenar. Wires, tubes, cables, and an assemblage of mechanical devices connected them to churning machinery overhead.
“What have you done?” Krajenar said, her voice hitching. Then she recalled the words of Captain Stokkard: They plan to transform our Mokisiaan soldiers into Sekkalan monsters too…
“The heavens do fall, Father.” Krajenar scowled at the four Sekkalans, then past them to Garo’s body in the hallway. She wanted to blame herself for the entire tragedy. Thousands had perished because of her failures. Holding back tears, she said, “No, this is not the way. Failure is not fatal. I can’t give up.”
She found herself on the verge of prayer, something she’d long forgotten how to do. Then, the memory of meeting with the Kal’iveths - Captain Taleer and PFC K’olt - flooded her consciousness. Though battle scarred and exhausted, they had exuded dedication. K’olt had the ultra-rare blue eyes, ones that had shown so much determination and compassion. His bloodstained and battered armor plates had borne every sign of sacrifice and peril. Yet, there he had stood, a mere teenager on a collision course with the Sekkalans.
His voice may be heard by all. We need only listen.
The klaxons battered Krajenar’s ears, but she removed her helmet and tossed it aside. She flicked the plasma rifle’s fire selector switch to auto, and then pulsed several bursts through the four Sekkalans with remorseless precision. She watched as they cooked in their seats.
“Alright you monsters, here I come too.”
Krajenar’s tears streamed now as she unbuckled the rifle and dropped it onto the hard deck plates. She strode over to the central docking console that protruded from a panel to the left of the well-done Sekkalans. She withdrew a hardline coil from a compartment on her belt and plugged it into the port. After a deep, slow breath, she connected the other end into her skull.
Blackness enveloped her. She felt it in her hearts as much as she saw it in her mind’s eye. A swirl of light lifted her pain and she felt in motion, then adrift. Her muscles tightened as she strained against an increasing downward pull. It sickened her stomach.
Adrift again, Krajenar gasped and clutched at the edge of the console. Her claws pierced the steel as a blitz of data invaded her mind. Quantum bridge maps and node locations. Troop levels and deployments. Starship movements and capabilities. War plans. An interstellar convoy and images of a distant, blue and white alien world.
“Ameo Nihav!”
Krajenar dropped to her knees screaming. Out of fury, she punched a wall plate below the console, shattering bones and joints in her hand. Pain sliced through the relentless torrent gushing from the war machine. Physical and mental agony collided, jarring her for a moment back to conscious reality. Her face, wet from tears, felt baked and swollen. Her eyes grew wide and bulged from their sockets. She tried to close them but couldn’t. She wailed and growled.
Krajenar’s body shook. More war data inundated her. She wrapped her arms around her chest when she saw again what seemed like countless Mokisiaans slaughtered and others taken prisoner. Older conversion files emerged. Red-chested children born with deformities, processed and converted. The diseased, converted. Soldiers. Isolated towns in Zkatzin isolated, the residents converted. Dissidents transported then converted. Swamps drained and secret facilities built. Within six years, all of Sekkalan…was converted.
She saw it all…
An ancient darkness. The Ruuksauro. Vaporous black matter. An evil so great, rising for ages throughout the galaxy. Beaten back, but rising again. Through the Sekkalans. And others. The Sekkalans. Expanding and propagating beyond Sceytera…
Going hoarse from screaming, Krajenar struggled to activate her comm circuit. “Tea
m…TEAM…extract protocol…Garo is dead. Get out! I know what this is. The captives are converted. This place is a conversion processing plant. Tell them to strike the node. No one left here is Angorgal anymore. Dead or converted to Sekkalan machines. Massive strikes needed against all nodes. Sekkalans also working with…Ruuksauro. Ancient race with evil intent.”
Corporal Harec responded. “We have enemy everywhere, Major. I have no location on you. Give me a path, and we’ll do an armed recon and get you out of there.”
In the background, Krajenar could hear Harec firing his rifle. She pictured Taulan and said, “Be strong, as always. I’ll be with you the whole way.”
“Repeat, Major,” Harec said. “I didn’t copy your last transmission.”
“No, Harec, you’ve got the lead now.” Krajener reached down to her right wrist and placed her thumb on a transmit button. She pushed it. “Catch up to the others! Get the message and data to our command! I’m dumping the Sekkalan files into your personal drives now! This needs to get back! Go!”
Krajenar cut her comm circuit and opened another data feed. In an instant, her feet grew cold. Then her hands. She weakened and crawled next to the wall, using it to support herself on her numb legs.
If the surgeon and Lieutenant Qev’arc, her intel team’s software specialist, had performed their jobs well, a digitized dream sequence flowed like an injected contagion into the Sekkalan network. The malicious software was a concoction of visual and audio data mimicking a sword-wielding attack by a blue-eyed Mokisiaan.
Designed to corrupt and disable, the malware package—dubbed “Blue Comet”—had no need for Krajenar’s physical body after download, but did need it before. Through the implant in her brain, every last electrical impulse inside her flowed along with Blue Comet in order to mask the viral invasion as a power surge.
Krajenar’s numb arms dangled while her chest tightened and vision narrowed. A slow death consumed her.
War Torrent Page 10
