by Mel Odom
“It’s been longer. I don’t care for being underwater. Too many things can happen, and I need air.”
Memory of the well echoed in Sage’s thoughts and tightened his stomach. “I agree. But we’re almost to the end of this. A lot of things will happen, and they’ll happen fast.”
“I’ll be ready for them, Master Sergeant.”
“See that you are,” Sage said.
The submersible powered forward.
Sage tracked Dramorper on the HUD. The other submersible was pulling ahead, putting distance between itself and the following vessel as it closed on the Phrenorian fortress.
“Have you heard anything about Noojin or Sergeant Kiwanuka?” Jahup asked.
Sage thought about trying to reassure Jahup, but he didn’t want to do that. The younger man was smart enough to know he would just be patronizing him. “No.”
“They have their job and we have ours,” Jahup said.
“Yeah. Let’s concentrate on ours and stay alive.”
Sage pinged Murad’s and Pingasa’s armor and discovered they were still inside Dramorper. The window on their evacuation had almost closed.
Tensing up a little, Sage opened a comm link to Murad. “Lieutenant, it’s time to get out of there.”
“On our way, Master Sergeant,” Murad replied. “We got another hail from the base that Pingasa had to attend to.”
“Problem?”
“They haven’t fired on us, so I’m thinking not. Pingasa was of the opinion whoever was at the other end was asking about some item that was supposed to be on the shipment. The corporal just copied and pasted the manifest. That should keep whoever contacted us busy for a little while.”
Sage breathed a little easier when the two dots that were Murad and Pingasa showed up outside the submersible. They were closer to ground zero than they’d planned.
Murad and Pingasa swam away quickly, but one of the jasulild turned away from the others of its kind and pursued them.
“Look out,” Sage warned.
“I see him,” Murad said.
Sixty seconds and counting, the near-AI announced.
Culpepper had armed the Dramorper. It was now a traveling bomb.
The numeral 59 showed up on the HUD in transparent red letters and counted down. 58. 57. 56 . . .
The submersible Sage clung to heeled in the water and came around to present its starboard side to the fortress. The Phrenorians would take notice now, but it was almost too late. A counteroffensive should be impossible at this point.
At twenty-four seconds and counting, the jasulild overtook Pingasa and gulped him down. The corporal never made a sound.
Sage kept his hold on the cargo netting and watched in numb horror as the sea monster swam away. Pingasa had become an integral member of his team, and Sage could barely believe he had just lost one of his own to that creature.
Focus, Sage commanded himself. He concentrated on his breathing, pushed Pingasa’s loss from his mind the way he had countless others before, and concentrated on his job. He’d had to do the same thing when he was training soldiers in boot camp and knew that most of them would only survive minutes after hitting groundside on whatever planet they ended up on. Staying focused now would save other lives.
Pingasa, Owen, Corporal—signal lost flashed across the HUD. Sage dismissed it.
When the timer hit zero, Murad was 13.7 meters out and on the wrong side of the second submersible with three jasulild closing in on him. Culpepper’s timing and Pingasa’s navigator skills were textbook perfect. Dramorper struck the riverbank and exploded. The barely seen stone underwater edifice disappeared in a roily cloud of silt and debris that spread outward.
Clinging to the cargo netting, Sage made himself stay where he was, told himself the armor would protect the lieutenant, and kept tracking Murad’s ping, then lost it in all the interference caused by the displacement of the bank and river floor.
The concussive wave from the detonation hammered the submersible and set off a series of shivers that ran the length and breadth of the vessel. When he was satisfied the worst of the explosion was over, Sage propelled himself down and swam under the submersible.
“Close in,” he ordered.
Jahup swam at Sage’s side and the rest of the soldiers fanned out around them. Sage pinged Murad’s armor and spotted the man hanging limp in the water, slowly floating away from the submersible.
The urge to check on the lieutenant’s condition surged within Sage, but he put it aside. His whole team was vulnerable now. They had to stick to the plan, and he had to lead them.
“Corrigan,” Sage called as he swam for the riverbank and hoped the opening they had planned on would be there.
“Yes, Master Sergeant?” Corrigan responded.
“Take care of the lieutenant.”
“Copy that.”
Most of the jasulild that had accompanied them downriver floated limply and were carried away by the current. A few of them moved weakly.
Sage swam toward the GPS pin he’d dropped on the blast site. If that opening wasn’t there, they were going to be trapped in the river without a defensive position or an exfil route.
And if the opening was there, they were going to be in the fight of their lives with Phrenorian transport ships about to deliver fresh troops.
FORTY-ONE
Operation Anthill
Yeraf River
Southwest of Makaum City
0536 Hours Zulu Time
A dead, dying, or unconscious jasulild lay across the 20.8-meter-diameter hole in the riverbank’s side. The creature partially blocked the rush of water filling the cavernous hardsite on the other side of the wall.
Sage swam beneath the behemoth and entered the dark cavern. “Culpepper.”
“Yes, Master Sergeant,” Culpepper replied.
“Take two soldiers and clear this debris.”
“Copy that.”
Sage factored the manpower available to him. Pingasa was gone. Murad was out of action, with Corrigan attending. Culpepper and his demolitions team took out four more. That left nine soldiers including himself taking part in the raid.
Against impossible odds.
The suit switched on the sonar system and the thermographic display, which was only a slight upgrade from guesswork as Sage followed the river flooding the riverbank’s interior. The constant, almost soundless blipping of the sonar array mapping the enclosed space gave Sage an immediate headache that throbbed at his temples and created flickering blindspots in his right eye. Most soldiers had no complaints with the sonar, but Sage had never been able to tune out the noise.
Judging from what he could make out of his surroundings, the fortress was mostly a natural cave system that had remained watertight. The Phrenorians had just taken what they’d found and enlarged it, then made it their own.
The amount of profits General Rangha made from his side business must have been staggering. After the attack on Cheapdock, Uncle Huang had ferreted out rumors that some of the Phrenorian general’s weapons had gotten destroyed by a mysterious blast. That had been when Sage realized what Zhoh and his team had been doing at the spaceport that night: destroying the evidence of Rangha’s crimes.
The black market dealings would have embarrassed the Phrenorian Empire and Zhoh, since it had been taking place around him. More than that, proof of black market dealings might have drawn in other systems’ coalitions that had so far stayed above the Alliance war with the Phrenorians.
If Zhoh had been left to his own devices, he might have destroyed the fortress on his own. Now, having chosen to go into battle, Zhoh was going to use all the arms contained within the caverns to annihilate Charlie Company and anyone else who stood in his way.
Sage took all of that in and realized the general would have put in systems to protect his ill-gotten black market goods. He hoped the river flooding into the chambers would partially clear the way.
The current swirled around him as it hit the end of the cavern an
d started to rise. The fortress had been constructed mostly underground. The people who had backgrounded the mission based on what they’d learned from Sage’s and Jahup’s observations, guesswork, and data retrieval believed the complex would fill from seventy-three to eighty-four percent capacity.
They hoped most of the war machines were below the level of the river.
The blast shattered nine meters of stone wall where the fortress abutted the river. Smaller rocks and silt ran with the high-velocity current rushing in from outside. Even the sonar was obscured and muddied by the constant motion and debris swirling around Sage.
Jahup, Escobedo, and Robinson swam with Sage.
“Corporal Palchuk,” Sage called.
“Here, Master Sergeant,” Palchuk replied instantly.
The HUD showed the corporal swimming eight meters behind Sage’s group with the remaining soldiers. Culpepper and his team would follow as soon as the blast opening was cleared.
Sage had chosen Palchuk as the second team leader inside the fortress because he was one of the few, like Sage, who had been inside a Phrenorian fortress. He would have a clearer idea of the base layout.
If Rangha followed standard layouts, Sage reminded himself. Rangha had proved he wasn’t much of a follower when it came to Phrenorian edicts. And the overall dimensions of the cave system would have presented problems as well.
“Take your team to Bravo Point,” Sage said. “We’ll take Alpha Point.”
He brought up the sonar mapping grid and dropped GPS pins labeled A and B onto the fortress layout. He also clearly marked the exit even though that would only mean a slow death somewhere out in the jungle if they had to run.
Retreat wasn’t an option. The Phrenorian warriors would catch up to them.
Sage uploaded the map to the combat package.
“Copy that, Master Sergeant. Good luck to you and yours.”
“Copy that. Same to you.”
A few meters farther on, the sonar mapped the first of the war machines. Aerial drones and gunships, hulking powersuits, and tracked assault vehicles that were four and five stories tall lay knocked over and in pieces. Culpepper had designed a series of shaped blasts. The first one had evidently accounted for the wall, and the rest of them had floated into the caverns, then exploded.
Seeing the destruction left by the explosives and the river current filled Sage with pride. Even if they all died here, they’d made a difference.
But he didn’t want Zhoh to get his hands on any salvage within the fortress. It had to come down too.
He swam up and had the suit jettison ballast it had taken on to render him more buoyant. The water continued to rise as the void filled, but he was overtaking it now.
The fortress generators, at least some of them, were above the waterline. Artificial light streamed down from overhead and the water got light enough to see.
Sage backed the sonar down so that it showed only as a thin overlay on the HUD. The 360-degree view with all the input was hard to manage, but he’d trained for years on the systems and it came as second nature to him.
Jahup, Escobedo, and the younger soldiers wouldn’t be so lucky.
“Stay with me,” Sage transmitted to the two soldiers with him.
“Copy that,” Robinson responded, and Jahup echoed that a moment later.
Three limp Phrenorians lay in a sprawling cluster atop the rising water surface. Sage surfaced beside them and intended to use them as cover while he sorted out the situation. The swirl of water animated them and they bobbed on the choppy waves.
Sage put a hand on one of them and pushed. The corpse moved easily, held on top of the water because of the dead warrior’s inherent buoyancy. Phrenorians were evolved water inhabitants. They hadn’t completely quit marine living. Their respiratory systems could separate oxygen from water.
That was something Sage had learned about the enemy when he’d first gone into combat against the Sting-Tails, but it wasn’t something he’d encountered before. It also made him realize the danger the teams were in.
“Master Sergeant!” Robinson yelled.
Sage whirled in the water, frustrated by his slowness. A couple meters away, Robinson struggled against a Phrenorian that must have been knocked unconscious by the explosions and had only just recovered consciousness.
The Phrenorian held Robinson’s helmet in one primary while it brought up a sword with its secondaries. The warrior’s tail struck at Robinson’s faceshield again and again and scored the surface in jagged scars.
Around them, other Phrenorians stirred and returned to awareness. Some appeared to be more dead than alive, but Sage didn’t trust that because they were clever enemies.
Sage drew the .500 Magnum from across his chest above the water and grabbed the tail of another Phrenorian as the new warrior lashed out at him. He took deliberate aim at one of the eyes on the back of the head of the Phrenorian attacking Robinson, reared back the pistol’s hammer, and squeezed the trigger.
The Sting-Tail tried to move, but it was too late. The Magnum round missed the black eye, but it cored through the Phrenorian’s cephalothorax and evacuated most of the contents over Robinson and the surrounding floodwaters. The warrior continued to fight, but the efforts were disjointed and Sage knew from experience that it was dead.
The Phrenorian whose tail Sage held used Sage’s grip as an anchor and pulled himself closer. The warrior held a beam pistol in one secondary, a sword in another, and one of his primaries was open wide as he reached for Sage’s neck.
Sage pulled on the tail and yanked himself around to face his opponent, shoved the .500 Magnum into the Phrenorian’s maw amid the chelicerae, and pulled the trigger as the warrior swung his sword. The sword’s edge slashed Sage’s helmet, but didn’t penetrate. The force of the blow knocked him back, but he hung on to the Phrenorian’s tail and jerked it off balance with him.
“Stay alert,” he warned over the op frequency. “The Phrenorians are water breathers. Some of them might have been killed by the concussions, but not all of them. Make sure they’re dead. Don’t just assume they are because they’re not moving.”
Thirty meters away, Palchuk and his people were embroiled in a battle of their own.
“Get out of the water!” Sage roared. “Get those explosive packs in place!”
Sage glanced overhead. The cave’s roof was only twenty meters away and covered with stalactites. He released the dead Phrenorian and raised his arm. He fired his grappling line and the sharp hook bit into the craggy rock between the catwalks that overlooked the lower level of the cavern.
Jahup was already riding his grappling line up to the ceiling. He held his Roley in one hand and fired laser blasts all the way up. He crouched next to a large stalactite and continued firing.
Sage holstered the Magnum and brought his assault rifle around, then triggered the grappling line retraction. He zipped up out of the water ahead of Robinson and Escobedo, and three Phrenorians swimming in his direction.
Laser fire and projectiles struck Sage’s armor repeatedly.
Warning! the near-AI stated. Suit integrity weakening rapidly. Eighteen percent efficiency lost.
Sage thudded against the cavern roof and switched over to the Roley’s grenade launcher as he took cover behind a stalactite. He fired a half dozen grenades into the water where Phrenorian shooters floated. Some of the gel-grenades stuck to the Phrenorians and others smashed against the rising water.
The explosions ripped some of the Sting-Tails to pieces or blew off big chunks. The grenades in the water created shock waves that incapacitated other warriors.
Sage reloaded his weapon from the armor reserves and scanned the battlefield.
Palchuk and his team ascended grappling lines on their side of the caverns. They exchanged fire with the Phrenorians as they locked into place against the cavern roof.
Dozens of the Phrenorians had survived Sage’s initial attack and now floated or swam among their dead comrades. Others found purchase on
the sides of the cavern and scrambled up from the water, but their positions would only be dry for minutes at most. During that time they could do a lot of damage, though.
“Use the gel-grenades,” Sage said. “The water conducts the concussive effect better, and any detonations against the cave walls weaken the overall structure.”
The soldiers immediately switched their attacks to the grenades and thunder filled the cavern. More debris and smoke swirled through the air. And still the floodwaters rushed in.
Reloaded now, Sage aimed for two of the groups and pumped grenades at them. A beat later, the explosions ripped the Phrenorians to pieces, from their perches, and blew chunks from the wall that turned into shrapnel that tore into everything in the vicinity.
The suit’s aud dampers negated most of the noise for Sage. Quivers ran through the roof of the cavern and debris rained down into the rising water. The stalactite Sage took cover behind cracked and fell into the water. It landed on a small knot of Phrenorians and took most of them down as well.
“Culpepper,” Sage called.
“Coming, Master Sergeant,” Culpepper replied. “Our doorway’s mined and ready to blow as soon as me and my crew get inside with you.”
“We’re on the roof, but we can’t hold that position long.”
“Copy that. Get your charges in place. We’ll be along with ours soon enough.”
The ops map loaded back into Sage’s battle computer. When he opened it up, X’s marked the areas where the teams were supposed to place their designated charges. Instead of B+8, the charges contained fissionable nuclear materials that promised a much bigger bang.
They’d put together a preliminary placement package to shatter the cavern’s integrity, and they’d go with that if they had to. However, Culpepper had worked out a new design based on the sonar map created by the feeds from the suits of the soldiers already in the main cavern.
More Phrenorians poured into the room from two doors. Sage marked both entrances on the combat map and sent the upgrade to his team. He readied his rifle.
