The Deadliest of Intentions

by Marc Stevens

  It sounded like a reasonable plan, and I was definitely tired of skulking around the alleys and streets of the complex. Tria, Klutch, and I divvied up the towers among ourselves. Tria had twice the launchers, so she got the three towers to our south. Klutch got two to the north, and I got two to the west. We would make a single pop-up pass by each target and give it a high-yield antimatter shell. I was confident there would be no follow-up strikes. When we were done, we would rally at the shield dome building and find Sael.

  Tria was ready to move out and stopped next to the Operative before departing. “Are you really going to try to clear Gredda of her treason?” she asked.

  “No, I said what I thought would be necessary for her to reveal the information she wished to die with.”

  Apparently, Sael had nothing else to say about it, so I mentioned our plan to use antimatter shells to resolve the tower issue. She took off at a dead run in the direction of the shield building and never looked back.

  My suit AI had a decent amount of information on the complex now that we had managed to crawl around more than half of it. It laid out a planned attack route for each of us. The plans included decoy maneuvers designed to attract the tower’s targeting systems. When a tower attempted to engage one of us, another would attack it from a different vector. We boosted low level down the street and made a hard-right turn at the end and then split up. I made the first pop-up maneuver, which got the desired attention. The buildings I dropped behind took a hit that left nothing but a massive smoking crater. I made another hard turn, and my first target appeared highlighted in my HUD. The tower fired a burst at one of my crewmates, and I sent my response against the upper portion of the structure. My AI nosed me over and accelerated to maximum. The tactic was blindingly quick and dropped me so low to the ground, I involuntarily put a hand out in front of me that made contact with the pavement. A huge shower of sparks flashed from my gauntlet, and a warning tone sounded in my helmet.

  To my surprise, Justice’s subsystem gave me a warning laced with deadpan sarcasm. It brought back a memory or two of my childhood.

  “Commander, it is advisable to keep your hands in the ride at all times.”

  It’s hard to say where he picked up that shit from, but it was funny and I would have laughed if it were not for the multiple high-order detonations that rippled across the complex. My next pop-up maneuver filled my HUD with the return signals of flying debris coming down from all directions. I got a highlighted target and pumped out another shell. Once again, I nosed almost to the pavement but refrained from reaching out to touch it. My mind turned in another direction, and I started wondering what Justice was doing. The thought was interrupted by more massive explosions. The Chaalt warships that were once in close proximity to the base would have no problems detecting the blindingly bright flashes of the detonating antimatter. My suit made another course correction, and I was now rapidly moving in the direction of the shield dome building. My HUD beeped at me when a blue triangle with Klutch’s name above it exited an alley to my right. An explosion in the distance let me know Tria had just finished off the last of the towers. Another blue triangle appeared in my helmet. Tria confirmed what I already suspected.

  “All targets destroyed!”

  I located the Operative against the wall of the shield compound. She was standing in the debris of several buildings and waved to me. I quickly landed next to her, as did Klutch and Tria.

  “Nathan, if we breach the wall at this location, it should put us very close to the main access of the shield control room.”

  “I have been thinking hard about our next move and I don’t think trying to take this building should be at the top of our priority list,” I said. “We need to secure the council members sooner than later. Is there any way to bring down the shield temporarily without taking the control room?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “We need to get the Legacy inside of the dome. If we manage to secure your people, the only safe place to protect them would be aboard my ship. It might also be the only way for us all to get off of this rock.”

  The Operative looked at me with a strange look on her face. If I had to describe it, I would say it might have been newfound respect.

  “I must admit that I had not considered that option. The shuttle that Gredda Porsha used to transport her troops was the council’s personal shuttle. It should have been more than obvious to me that it was the only transport at this facility. I apologize for my failings. I am only focusing on the goals that I have formulated, and I am compromising the mission by doing so.”

  “It will not matter unless we can come up with a way to get the Legacy inside the dome. I still think we should secure the council’s freedom before we worry about the shield controls. A pitched battle inside the control room may yield the same results as the comms building. If the shield comes down for keeps, your people are going to swarm this facility, and we are not going to know who to trust with the future of your people. Tria, Klutch, do you have anything you would like to add?”

  My crewmates looked at each other.

  “No, Commander, we are ready to move on your orders,” Tria said.

  “Sael, where is the engineering crew quarters located?”

  When Sael did not answer right back, I turned on her ready to bite off a piece of her ass. I held my tongue because she was holding up a hand to me and looked deep in thought.

  “Nathan, there might be a way to bring down the shield for a matter of seconds. I have no way of knowing for how long, but if the Legacy is close, Justice might be able to clear the shield before it comes back up!”

  “If I know Justice, he is cloaked and very close to the dome. He doesn’t like being out of comms with us any more than we do. If we can bring it down for a handful of seconds, Justice will get inside. What do you think it will take to shut it down?”

  “The energy conduits that come from the power source have multiple standbys. They converge into the base of the control room in several locations,” Sael explained. “If we can locate the active conduits and disrupt the power supply, we could possibly bring down the shield for a very short period of time while it transfers the power load.”

  Klutch piped in with the billion-credit question. “How are we going to know which one is carrying the load, and how are we going to find it?”

  “There will be switching stations below the control building. We will use the portal device to find them and search each until we find the active conduits.”

  “If we are thinking this might work, there is a very good chance that the Hivemind has as well,” Tria said, shaking her head. “The switching stations may be guarded. At the very least, the active one will most assuredly be. It would be foolish to think the Prule will let us wander around inside the walls of the compound while we perform a random search.”

  It really didn’t matter to the beast in me if I battled Prule inside the compound or outside. What was bothering me was that we needed to continue our momentum and assault the Prule no matter where we were. If we went with Sael’s plan, it might have the positive effect of drawing hostile forces to this location and away from our priority target, which was now the engineering building.

  13

  “Klutch, let’s skirt the wall to another location and make a hole!”

  The Troop Master threw me a thumbs up and took off through the wreckage heaped around the wall. We followed with Sael bringing up the rear. I was starting to think it would be a good idea to use the Daggers as air cover, but Sael had previously warned us about a large number of missile batteries that were still unaccounted for. I was not going to risk our only other means of transportation if everything went to hell in a handcart. We quickly made our way around the side of the wall, and Klutch stopped about halfway down. We dispersed into a defensive perimeter and took a knee.

  “Proceed, Troop Master!”

  We saw the flash of the device activating but heard Klutch grumble an oath under his breath. Apparently
, he chose an unsuitable location.

  “Moving!” he called out to us.

  We got up and followed as he chose another spot about thirty feet farther down the wall. We took a knee and waited. The flash of the machine was not followed by any cursing, so I turned to look, and Klutch had his back to the portal waving me over with his usual goofy grin. I was going to tell Tria and the Operative to get moving, but it froze in my throat. A Prule Hunter’s leg and the capsule-shaped upper body started to step through the portal.

  “Klutch, kill the portal now!”

  The Troop Master spun around and fell backward on his ass at the sight of the Hunter staring back at him. He hit the kill switch just as the Hunter was deciding it was going to pay us a visit. Two of the machine’s legs and part of its upper torso sheared off cleanly and fell to the ground at his feet. If I had to guess, I would say the Troop Master’s waste disposal systems were busily tidying up the lower half of his armor. We had used the machine an unknown number of times. This was a first for anything coming from the other side of the portal. We should have never assumed something would not get curious about a large round opening, and not want to take a look. We would not be making that mistake ever again.

  Klutch got up and called out once again. “Moving!”

  He ran all the way around the wall to another side and then stopped. We still had no movement outside the wall, so this time we chose to turn our defensive perimeter to look in and not out. Klutch got a good hole first try, and I ran up beside him. Waving to Tria and the Operative, I made a circle motion with my hand and pointed behind myself and Klutch, then held up a finger. Tria quickly nodded, and she and the Operative took a knee just behind me. I tapped Klutch on the shoulder, and he went through with his weapon ready. I was right on his heels and stepped out of the portal to Klutch raising his beam weapon at two Hunters. They were standing at the location of our first good hole and were carefully inspecting the sheared off parts of the Prule that stepped through our portal. I didn’t need any encouragement from the beast and slapped Klutch hard on the shoulder. I fired a beam shot striking the unshielded Prule in the middle of the torso, and Klutch fired on the second one. Both were blown to scrap, and we searched for more targets. Tria and the Operative came through the portal, and Klutch quickly shut it down.

  Before I could say anything, Tria opened fire with her beam weapon on a Hunter that came charging around the corner of the control building. The energy discharge was blinding and brought down the bio machine’s shield. A fast follow-up shot from Klutch left the remains smoldering and scattered in all directions. We waited to see if we had any more takers, but nothing happened.

  We ran to the side of the control building, and I went to one corner and Tria and the Operative to the other.

  “Clear!” I called out.

  “Clear!” called Tria a second later.

  “I can see the entrance and have no movement!”

  I could only hope we had taken out the Hunters that were guarding the grounds and that any inside might possibly be unaware of the racket we had just made. It was doubtful, considering the explosive force of our beam weapons, but I would remain hopeful.

  “Klutch, turn that thing on and start searching the ground around the building!”

  After seeing multiple flashes followed by an equal amount of swearing, Klutch called out.

  “Commander, I am finding no voids underground at this location!”

  “Move farther away from the building and keep trying!” Sael yelled out to him.

  After another round of less than appropriate words, Klutch moved away from the building and started working a new search pattern. He got a good hole on the fourth try. It was a lot smaller than any we had previously encountered. It would be one person per jump. I grabbed Klutch before he could go first and let him know I would be the one jumping. He didn’t like it, but it also wasn’t a question with a multiple-choice answer, either. I pulled my shotgun from its clip and jumped before he could tag team with Tria. I was a little surprised at the sudden drop of about thirty feet. Before I could react, I glanced off of the riser tubes going upward into the building. Using my gravity boosters, I arrested my fall and righted myself before hitting what I assumed was the roof of the switching station. I set down as gently as possible and used my no-light sensors to find the service hatch that was snuggled up to the power conduits. I called to my team, gave them a sitrep, and told them to hold tight in a defensive perimeter. Tria came on and gave me just enough backwash to let me know she still cared. I swallowed my cheeky reply and let her know I needed some time to work the problem. Talking wasn’t going to solve the issue. If I lived through this, I felt I would somehow pay for my remarks.

  I carefully examined the hatch, and it was easy to see that there was nothing high-tech about it. There was no other way to access this tunnel unless you entered from the room below me. It was a simple tab of metal on a turn latch. All I had to do was turn the tab and let it fall into the opening. I reached down and grabbed the tab, turning it slowly until it was ready to open. I pointed my shotgun down and let the door fall free. It was faintly lit inside the room, and there was nothing moving. I dropped inside and quickly looked around. If this was the machinery operating the shield, it sure didn’t look like it. There were two lights on a panel that were close enough to the color of red, that I went ahead and made the leap of faith it meant it was in the off position. Klutch called down and said the portal had just started flashing. I told him I was on my way. And as an afterthought, I pulled a grenade then tossed it inside. It would suck to be the first hostile through that door. I boosted hard up the narrow tunnel and saw the portal stepping up in the frequency of flash. I cleared the opening with enough velocity I would have flown to the bottom of the projector dome. Klutch foresaw this eventuality and stood over the opening. I hit him at a fair clip, but he held on. We were both dumped against the side of the building as the portal disappeared.

  “Ha! You still had at least three seconds, Commander!”

  The looks I was getting from Tria and the Operative did not seem as lighthearted as Klutch’s. We got up off the ground and moved back to the rear of the building. Klutch had paced off the distance to the location of the shaft and got a good hole right off. I stepped forward, but Tria grabbed the back of my weapons pack. She came up on one of our discrete comms channels.

  “I have heard you use certain statements in the past when you thought one of us might not be getting a job done in the proper amount of time. I am only going to repeat it because it is, after all, an Earth saying and not necessarily one that other races would consider using. I do wish to make sure it is stated properly. Stop dicking around!”

  She gave me a shove and down I went. This time I used my boosters to stop about a foot above the hatch. I eased down and readied myself. When I let the door fall, it bounced off the head of a Prule Hunter. Where the hell were all these pieces of shit coming from? It was one of those times where you didn’t know which of us was more surprised to see the other. Thinking I could quickly resolve the situation, I held down the trigger on my shotgun, deciding to give it the whole shebang. The triphammer explosions of a dozen penetrator slugs to the machine’s head drove it violently to the floor. The slugs made some impressive dents in the Prule’s armor but did not penetrate. The Hunter thrashed around on the floor and quickly let me know that a dollar’s worth of nickel knots was not going to dissuade it from trying to kill me. I could hear the whine of its energy weapon getting warmed up as the machine’s power whip smashed upward through the ceiling. I boosted backward from the opening and sent a beam shot in reply. I will never know what caused the massive explosion that followed my shot, because I was blown back up through the portal. Tria and Klutch were standing ready to arrest my ascent, but the attempt was in vain. I hit them with such velocity they were knocked to the ground. The huge blast that belched me from the opening canned the Operative as well.

  I stopped my spin and righted myself. As I look
ed up, I could no longer see the opacity of the shield dome that had once dominated the star-filled horizon. Just about four heartbeats later, it flickered back into place.

  “Justice?”

  “I am here, Commander!”

  I had to admit; the voice of the quirky AI was an overwhelming relief. As of that point forward, all of his past annoyances were officially forgiven!

  “I have a lock on your position, Commander, and will upload your battle armor’s recorded combat data for current intelligence assessments. I have also located the Daggers for retrieval and have identified a large number of hostile targets moving in mass toward your coordinates. All are emanating Prule machine communication signals. I recommend you shelter in place, and I will address the situation.”

  “Roger that, Justice! Setting up a defensive perimeter and will move on your recommendation.”

  I quickly landed, and we went weapons out with our backs to the building. I cleared the demonic image from my visor and made eye contact with my team. Even the old witch had a smile on her face for a change.