by G. P. Eliot
“You always did, Cap.” Ida went silent, although her tiny icon ‘I’ appeared on his HUD.
“Captain?” It was Lory, meeting him at the door and looking in.
She’s looking at me funny, Hank thought. Shit. Had he left the Alpha suit-to-suit channel open as he talked to Ida? He must remember to keep their conversations private!
“It’s a long way down…” Lory was saying–throwing him an annoyed glance.
“I got poly-rope,” came the deep burr of Drake Madigan’s voice as the giant of a man approached, already unlatching a small, box-like device from his suit’s utility belt.
Phtt! He pointed the thing at the ice floor that was as hard as concrete, and the small box fired a metal spike deep into the surface. Attached to the other end of the spike was a shining silver cable, made of literally thousands of strands of poly-carbonate and graphite thread, as strong as steel.
“Out of the way, boss…” Hank lightly bounced to one side in the planetoid’s light gravity as Madigan shouldered his way to the edge of the shaft. Wherever this elevator of the Professor’s was, it wasn’t here, was it? Hank thought dismally. Madigan looked down, shrugged, turned around, and then jumped backwards.
Woah. “That guy has cojones…!” Hank said in alarm, before his suit speakers picked up the thunk, thunk, thunk, of Madigan as he rappelled down the inside of the left shaft, hanging onto the box and the poly-rope, and ending with a larger kerTHUNK!
“Come on down, the weather’s freezing…” Hank and the others could hear Madigan’s voice, loud and clear over their suit channels.
Hank looked at Lory, who was already staring back.
“After you, boss…”
Dammit.
Warning! Proximity Alert!
Hank’s suit pinged him almost immediately. “Well, it’s not surprising, is it?” He muttered angrily to himself, as he and the rest of the team were squashed inside the metal elevator that had been stationary at the bottom of the lift shaft, thanks to Cortez’ powering down the research facility.
Only, not for long–right? Hank remembered. Even now, the X3 A.I. was rebooting itself, there could be anything out there waiting for them…
“Ida? Take a look for me, will you?” Hank whispered through the private channel. The entire team had climbed through the access port in the roof, and were now standing before the doors, as Madigan was about to heave on the metal shim that he had levered into the lift doors. Did that guy have ANY bit of kit on him?
“I’m re-calibrating your soldier suit’s motion sensors…” he heard Ida say, she always sounded so cute when she was thoughtful. “Whoops! I’m detecting movement on the other side. And thermals read three shapes. Two on the right, one on the left,” his personal A.I. said.
Hank opened-up the Alpha suit-to-suit channel that connected his HUD to the rest of the team and gave them their operational orders.
Target: 2 Right Hank, Lory, Steed 1 Left Cortez, Serrano, Madigan
Hank readied his pistol, holding it in both hands. And wished that he had some battle-stims as he nodded at Madigan. “Open her up,”
Kerank! With a grunt, the giant pulled the doors apart and the shim popped into the air.
Hank could see, with perfect clarity, a steel metal corridor on the other side of the lift. Wide. Low-ceilings. Glass doors on either side, and a much larger set of bulkhead doors at the far end…
Two deep-red suited guards were already standing on the right, and another on the left.
Ignore the left! His battle instincts told him. Trust the others to take it. Hopefully.
Thwap! Hank’s first bullet punctured the first guard’s environmental suit just under the left-hand side of his ribs. Hank saw the blood spray out from the far side of him like paint.
The second guard was already stepping out to get a clear shot—
Thock! Something small, and flashing silver, slammed into the man’s helmet, splintering it and making him flail. That would be Lory, Hank grinned like one of his wolves. She’d said something about being good with those poly-carbonate knives of hers…
The struggling, helmet-shattered guard was firing wildly, his bullets hitting the ceiling—
“Urk!” It was Steed’s shot that slammed into his chest, throwing him onto the body of the first.
“Down, Captain!” Ida warned him, his HUD flashing red as, unthinking, the Captain hit the floor and rolled. It was the damn guard on the left–both Cortez and Serrano had failed to take him out!
But, luckily for everyone there was still Madigan.
The giant had shouldered the two smaller men out of the way, raising what looked suspiciously like a highly unregulated and unlicensed sawn-off shotgun, and—
PHOOM!
“There goes that guy,” Steed said as he held out his hand and helped the Captain to his feet. “Could’ve been worse,” the Confederate General said, nodding to the blackened dent in the wall where Hank’s head had been, and where the last guard had tried to take him out.
“I am going to seriously have to rethink this battle-strategy,” Hank groaned. He swapped Serrano for Steed, because he knew that he and Lory would be able to protect the Professor…I think…and Madigan and Steed together meant that Cortez only had to think about chicken dinners. Probably.
“Come on, no time…” Lory was already moving down the passageway, pausing at the first set of glass doors before sliding out in front of them. “Clear. That way to the generator rooms,” she nodded to the far end of the corridor. “I’ll cover you, bear left.”
“Serrano, stay behind me,” Hank growled. “And for god’s sake don’t shoot me in the back!”
“What the hell is that!?” Hank whispered as he edged to the corner of the room. The team had passed the initial corridor, seeing strange research laboratories on either side of them. The Professor had seemingly wanted to dawdle here and there, pointing out where one bank of computers were ‘crunching micro-quanta’–whatever that meant–or where another room was filled with robotic arms like some demented spider’s nest ‘robotic micro-creation of nano-processors’ Serrano had said somewhat proudly, until Lory had pointed out how those nano-processors were probably going to be used for missile control systems to bomb the hell out of Confederate planets.
But now they had progressed into some sort of wide, semi-circular lobby with multiple doors heading this way and that, food and drinks dispensers along the walls, and shiny chrome & leather tables and benches. Some even still had cups and plates on them, making it a little bit creepy.
“First, where is everyone,” Hank muttered as he crouched by the open door. “And second–what is that again!?”
He was nodding towards the doors, which were plates of thickened glass, and which seemed to flash silver, black, silver, black… From them came a deep, grating mechanical whump-whump-whump-whump!
“Captain-sir, it must be the X3 A.I.,” Cortez’s voice sounded worried over the alpha-channel. “It’s regaining control of itself…”
“Oh no,” If Cortez was worried, then Serrano appeared mortified.
“Do I really want to ask…?” Hank groaned.
“That’s the Displacement Mechanism…” Serrano said.
The who-what-now? Hank had never heard of it. Which was unsurprising, as it was an architectural feature that related almost solely to ice-planets. As Serrano explained, Hank’s spirits only lowered…
The planetoid of X3-2e was little more than a ball of ice and cosmic rocks, all mushed together. But even a planetoid as small as this one had plate-tectonics, Serrano explained to them. There were ‘plates’ of ice that ground and crushed and moved against each other, meaning that any structure built in or on the surface would periodically be crushed–unless it used a Displacement Mechanism.
“Each room is really as an independent module, anchored as best as possible,” Serrano said. “The X3 A.I. controls metal plates–like sheaths–that grind and cut away at the ice between the rooms and corridors threatening to crush ea
ch module…”
“So, you’re saying that the X3 A.I. is opening and closing the doors really fast with these metal plates it has, and is going to try and cut us in half?” Hank translated.
Serrano looked a little surprised that there was a simple way of putting it, “Uh yeah, I guess that about covers it…”
“We’ll wedge it,” Steed said, ever the most practical. The Confederate looked over to the massive form of Madigan, standing guard at the back. “Big Guy, you’re with me.”
Hank covered them as Steed and Madigan crept into the room. It wasn’t easy to hide Madigan’s bulk, but there you go, shimmying across the floor before they reached the far-left door, flashing black corridor; silver steel plate. He heard over their shared channel as Steed directed Madigan to rip one of those chrome benches from its fixings, where they held it before the door, waiting for their chance to—
“Boss–on your right!” Ida said suddenly, a second before his suit sensors pinged.
Warning! Proximity Alert!
“Multiples 2 O’clock!” Hank shouted, just as the flashing doors on the other side of the cafeteria stopped flashing completely, and in charged more of these red-suited guards.
“Fire at will!” Hank wasted no time at shooting, his bullet taking out the one in front with professional ease—
Which only meant that the red-suits behind had a moment’s cover to dart this way and that to the cover of the tables.
“Argh!” There was a muffled scream as Lory managed to shoot out someone’s ankle, bringing them down with an agonized scream to the floor.
But Madigan and Steed are exposed! Hank was thinking, wishing over and over that he had some battle stims. He didn’t. But what he did have was…
“A diversion,” Hank thought coldly as his back hit the side of a bench and he took cover. But he wasn’t in the Union special forces any more. He didn’t have flash-banks and smoke grenades. What else was there?
Oxygen. The oxygen tanks on his environmental suit weren’t ‘tanks’ per-se… They were really tubing of compressed gas that were filtered and chemically transformed in the moments before they reached the outflow in his helmet. There were still environmental suits out there that used tanks – but unless you were working in a pristine, safe environment, then the risks of having space dust rupturing a giant tank of compressed air on your back was really too high.
Hank’s gloved hands punched the connectors that ran from his suit’s belt down his thigh, where each section of tubing could be refilled and replaced. With hands shaking with adrenaline, he quickly undid the small rubber clamps, pulled out the thin coil of blue tube and held it up.
“Ah, boss–is that really a wise idea?” Ida said.
Warning! Suit Oxygen Levels -30%
Oxygen Levels: 27 mins decreasing
“Nope,” Hank said, snapping the rubber seal on the end and flinging it at the enemy.
The compressed gas surged into the room, condensing in seconds into thick billows of white steam as it reacted with the colder atmosphere, before dissipating just as quickly–
But Hank and Lorry were already on the move; Hank leapt forward, his magnetic boots hitting the nearest table as the smoke cleared to reveal two shocked red-suits looking up at him… Thwap! Thwap!
Lory rolled into the open space. She was insane, a peripheral part of Hank’s mind thought as she stood up with a graceful movement to shoot one more red-suit and spun on her heel to deliver a devastating kick to another. All four went down.
Oxygen Levels: 25mins decreasing
It was done. The enemy was dead, and as Hank turned around, it was just in time to see Madigan heave one of the benches into the door gap, where it shuddered with an almighty crunch as the ‘sheath’ of ice-cutting metal slammed into it. The bench buckled and started to groan.
“Come on!” Steed was already hopping through into the blackness.
“Yeah, I don’t know about the rest of you–but I have no intention of becoming sliced bread…” Hank growled, helping Serrano, who looked as white as a sheet through the face plate of his helmet, to his feet and pushing him forward.
6
Suit Lights: ACTIVATED
Oxygen Levels: 19 mins decreasing
The darkened passageway lit up with the eerie glow of blue light coming from their suits, and Hank saw that they were in a narrow metal corridor that looked as though it wasn’t used.
The team was walking as stealthily as they dared, and Hank had to admit that it was pretty creepy to be walking headlong into the dark.
“Some kind of service access…” Hank muttered, passing the ‘break-glass-in-case-of’ cabinets on either side, with spare environmental suits and singular breathing apparatus on the far side.
“This leads to the generator room,” Lory whispered over the suit-to-suit alpha channel. “This is the route people are evacuated through, there’s the emergency chute on the far side of the—” She was saying, seconds before a tiny red light appeared far ahead of them.
“What is that?” Lory said.
“I have no idea,” neither the Captain’s suit nor Ida were registering movement or thermal signatures. “Another computer? The generator?” Hank suggested.
But then the light started to get brighter.
Warning! Proximity Alert!
Private Channel: “Ida–you getting any readings on that?” Hank whispered as he crouched in a defensive position by the side of the passageway wall. Lory was at his shoulder, and they effectively completely covered Serrano behind them. On the other side of the passage Hank knew that Madigan and Steed were doing the same thing for Cortez.
“We got thermal readings–but no biological compounds, flyboy,” Ida whispered into his ear.
No biologicals, the Captain of the Lordstar thought as he saw the red light growing brighter, larger–and nearer. “It’s not human. Serrano–care to elaborate?”
“I, uh–I have no idea, Captain…” the Professor’s voice came back over the suit-to-suit alpha channel–just as there was a loud crunch from behind them.
It was the Displacement door. It had finally broken the metal bench and slammed shut–and didn’t open again.
What the…Hank’s head half turned. “I thought that thing was supposed to carve away at the ice?”
“It is. I mean, it was,” Serrano said. But now, apparently it had just decided to crunch close and not open at all. Had it got stuck? Hank didn’t think so. In fact, all his battle instincts told him that this looked an awful lot like a…
“It’s a trap!” Hank said, just as the first glimmer of his blue suit lights started to pick out the details of what was coming for them. There were edges. Sharp edges. And lots, and lots of metal.
“It’s a damned battle-droid!” Hank shouted.
The Union battle-droid almost filled the metal corridor. It was almost as big as Drake Madigan, Hank thought. But what he was much more concerned about was the fact that he had seen these things chew up the front lines of Confederate infantry in their implacable jaws.
The battle-droid was on two sets of tracks which were almost whisper-silent, and the red light came from the singular ‘eye’ in the middle of what might have been its head–if the thing even had a head. As it was, the droid looked like a cross between a tank and a stag beetle, as it held in front of it two large metal pincer teeth. Around that was a set of fat iron spikes, sharpened to gleaming points.
“There’s no way back,” Steed said as, for a moment, they were all frozen by indecision with what they could do.
There’s no way around the thing…
There’s no way back…
Hank thought quickly, doing his best to remember how to assess the situation as his command training had taught him. The only benefit they had going for them was that the thing didn’t have automated guns. Some of the models he’d seen had–but it was just as dangerous without them, as it wouldn’t stop, it wouldn’t tire, and bullets would more or less bounce off of its thick metal hide.
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Crunch! The metal pincers–each wider apart than Hank was, and about as long as his outstretched arm, sliced together, overlapping each other as they joined, before separating again…
“Ten meters…” Lory said, still holding her pistol in front of her but looking about as worried as Hank did concerning what to do about it.
“Fuck this—” Hank fired anyway, smashing the thing’s light and causing it to blink out. It didn’t stop it from trundling forward, and still crunching its pincers every meter or so—
Hank’s shot was the starting gun for everyone else to vent their frustrations. A torrent of bullets poured onto the thing, lighting it up like a firework display for the Union Day Parade.
