We descend. A few minutes after breaching the atmosphere, seven iron-gray ships resembling twelve-sided dice streak toward us and fall in behind the squadron. One of them slips past us to take the lead and guide us down to Station West Four, which from the air looks like an international airport with an art deco vibe. Landing strips of varying lengths and widths crisscross one another within the arena-like station. A geodesic dome, presumably the control center, looms over the area, hanging like a disco ball from a massive St. Louis Arch kind of thing. The escort ships bring us in over a landing strip near the edge of the surrounding structure, a sloping wall of smoked glass, and then return to the air, leaving us standing there for several minutes.
“This is not a productive use of our time,” Mells comments.
“They’re making us sweat, aren’t they?” I say to Commander Do.
“If by that you mean they’re deliberately making us wait to see how we react, then yes,” she says.
“And how do we react?”
With a thin smile, Commander Do says, “By waiting.”
And we’re waiting for quite a while before anyone in authority makes their presence known, and when they do, they make quite the show out of it. The d12 squadron returns, escorting a much larger eighth ship that eases in at the end of our runway and hovers over the tarmac. As the escorts take position to surround us (in a totally nonthreatening way, of course), a panel slides open on the underside of the boss ship, and a gangplank extends to the ground. Five Olkosians wearing bulky armored battlesuits the color of desert sand step out and march right up to us.
“You are Commander Do Lidella Det,” one of them says.
“I am.”
The helmet comes off to reveal a humanoid with skin the color and texture of lemon rind. “I am Vice-General Torsk of the Noble Legion,” he says. “State your business.”
“My business is to locate the Vanguard squadron that arrived on your world four days ago to conduct inspections of certain weapons storage facilities,” Commander Do says. “The global enclave and the Kyros Alliance Council of Generals have already discussed my mission here, and the global enclave has approved our presence on your world. You are of course welcome to verify my claims.” She puts on a forced smile. “We’ll wait.”
Torsk glances past Commander Do to check us out. “You are to report to me directly before conducting any search of any government or military facility.”
“As per the agreement negotiated between our two governments,” Commander Do says pleasantly.
“You are not to engage with any government or military representative without first contacting me directly.”
“As per the agreement negotiated between our two governments.”
“You are not to engage any civilian in any capacity during your time on Olkos Secondus.”
“Ah, now that was not part of the agreement negotiated between our two governments,” Commander Do says, her diplomatic game face firmly in place. “Therefore, we will engage civilians if I deem it necessary to carry out our mission, and I will do so without contacting you first.”
Torsk narrows his dull orange eyes at the commander.
“I have one purpose here, vice-general: to locate my people. The sooner I do that, the sooner I may leave. Wouldn’t you therefore agree that your best course of action is to let me do my job without unnecessary impediments that would only prolong my presence on your world?”
“I want progress reports every three hours,” Torsk says, “and I don’t give a damn if that wasn’t per the agreement negotiated between our two governments.”
“Actually, they negotiated for reports every hour, but I’m happy to accommodate your schedule. Now, if you’ll excuse us?”
Torsk snorts, snaps his helmet back on, and storms back to his ship.
“Despite what I said to the vice-general, my preference is to leave the civilian population out of this,” Commander Do says. “Dealing with the government and the military is precarious enough.”
“And if we do have to engage civilians?” Erisia asks.
“We do so with the utmost civility and respect. Let’s give the global enclave no reason to justify their hostility toward us.” She nods at no one in particular. “Vanguardians, to the air. We have a job to do.”
***
Our first stop is Island Northmost, so named because it’s the major island farthest north of Continent Primus, the planet’s largest landmass (Olkosians are not terribly imaginative when it comes to naming things). The global enclave allowed Sgt. Vex Bar and his unit to set up camp there so the Olkosians could ignore them more easily.
“Or eliminate them without having to worry about witnesses,” Grun says.
The thought’s crossed my mind too, but the theory doesn’t hold up. The best way to get rid of them would have been to hide any damning evidence, convince them there was nothing to find, and let them go away on their own. Disappearing Vex Bar and his unit like a bunch of mob informants would only draw more attention to Olkos Secondus (as evidenced by the fact we’re here).
We descend toward the barren, rocky patch of land that is Island Northmost, toward a ring of small, oblong buildings — the temporary shelters comprising Sgt. Vex Bar’s encampment. Welcome to the Vanguard Trailer Park, people.
Commander Do hails the encampment and gets nothing. Dead air. “Stay alert,” she tells us as we come in for a landing. “Sergeant Pwamee, take your unit and make a low pass over the island, spiral search pattern starting with the outer perimeter.”
“What am I looking for, commander?” Erisia asks.
“Anything.”
Erisia and hyer team break off. The rest of us touch down in the center of the encampment. The place is deserted, that much is obvious, but there are no signs of a fight, everything is buttoned up and tidy — there’s nothing here to suggest they left unwillingly.
This much nothing is highly suspicious.
“Commander, was there was a civilian support team?” I say.
“A full support team was dispatched to erect the encampment but they returned to Kyros Prime immediately afterward.”
“So, no chance of finding someone cowering in one of the shelters, too scared to send out a distress call?”
“That would make life easier, but no.” Her brow wrinkles. “However...”
“However?”
“I want an orderly search of the shelters, teams of two. If you find anything out of the ordinary, call it in immediately,” Commander Do tells my unit. “Sergeant, you’re with me.”
Commander Do makes a beeline toward one of the structures. It’s identical in appearance to the others but slightly larger. Officer’s quarters and the encampment’s headquarters, as it turns out; the extra space is dedicated to a small terminal not unlike the one in my quarters.
“When we’re on Kyros Prime, our headsets continuously upload their data to Alliance systems,” Commander Do says, sitting at the terminal. “When we’re in the field, they relay data to a remote system for later transmission to Kyros Prime.”
“So whatever Vex Bar and his team were doing at the time of their disappearance —”
“Should be on the sergeant’s terminal.” She fires up the system and calls up the data logs. “Hm. The last transmission from the entire unit was two days ago.”
“When they last checked in,” I say, though I feel like I’m missing her point — which I am.
“No, sergeant, I mean every single headset in Sergeant Vex Bar’s unit stopped transmitting at the exact same time. That wouldn’t happen unless they were wiped out in one fell swoop.”
“Or their ability to transmit was wiped out. They might have been hit with an electromagnetic pulse or the like,” I say. Chances are the commander’s right and the unit was hit so hard they had no time to react, but I’m not ready to give up on them quite yet.
“Wait.” Commander Do leans in and squints at the screen. “The system recorded one last very brief transmission from each of the headsets
. Strange, though; each burst is five to ten minutes apart from the last.”
“One mystery at a time, commander. Can we track the source?”
She allows a cautiously optimistic smile. “We can.”
***
Before we depart, we watch the video feed from Sgt. Vex Bar’s headset, which tells us nothing useful. One minute he and his unit are flying over the ocean. The next, the screen flashes with a brief burst of static and then goes black.
According to Vex Bar’s system, the series of final transmissions came from Island Southwest Quintus, one of a half-dozen closely clustered islands located (guess where?) southwest of Continent Primus. Island Southwest Quintus could easily pass as an Earthly tropical island, as long as you ignore the fact that the palm trees have bright purple trunks.
We set down on the beach. My feet sink into the gritty sand, which emits a faint odor that reminds me of talcum powder. Gentle waves lazily lap the shoreline. Too bad Olkos Secondus is so insular. They could make a fortune marketing Island Southwest Quintus as a tropical vacation paradise.
Commander Do takes a handful of first ranks to conduct high-altitude scouting runs and splits the rest of us into teams of three to run low-altitude and ground searches. The island isn’t huge, but she doesn’t want to risk overlooking a single telling detail.
I take Johr and Tosser with me to conduct a low-altitude pass around the edge of the island. For several minutes, we see nothing unusual at all, just sand, sand, and more sand.
“Sergeant,” Johr says, pointing out an odd dark patch on the beach ahead of us.
As we close in, the dark patch seems to waver and scintillate, like a mirage — but it’s no mirage; it’s movement. The beach here is absolutely swarming with creatures similar to lobsters. They’re smaller, each maybe the size of a rat, and their shells are a mottled tan that matches the color of the sand. There must be hundreds of them, maybe thousands, scuttling all over the place.
“Olkosian sand ants,” Tosser says. “Scavengers.”
The word sends a chill down my spine. What, exactly, are they scavenging?
“Tosser, clear these things out,” I say.
“Sergeant?”
“Do it.”
Tosser is especially adept at gravity manipulation. I can set off a gravity pulse easily, and I’ve learned to intensify or weaken gravity beyond my own body with relative skill, but Tosser possesses the fine control of a brain surgeon. He touches down at the edge of the swarm and lifts his three-fingered hands in a scooping motion. The sand ants float up off the beach. Tosser gestures again, gently chucking the entire swarm into the ocean.
And then Tosser recoils in horror, falls to his knees, and vomits like a fire hose. I’m dangerously close to joining him.
“Commander, we found Sergeant Vex Bar’s unit,” I say, fighting to make my stomach behave. “What’s left of them.”
SEVENTEEN
I think it’s safe to say Olkos Secondus and the Kyros Alliance are not going to become friends anytime soon.
As soon as we found the mass grave, Commander Do called in for a support team to properly excavate the site and recover the bodies, along with any evidence to help us put together a solid picture of what happened here. In doing so, the commander pissed off the global enclave and came dangerously close to sparking an interplanetary incident. Reinforcements of any kind were not part of the agreement, so of course the global enclave called shenanigans. The Council of Generals told the global enclave to build a bridge and get over it (my words, not theirs) because Island Southwest Quintus was a crime scene now, which meant the Alliance was well within its rights to investigate.
While they bickered and threw their respective diplomatic weights around, we focused on figuring out what happened to Sgt. Vex Bar’s unit, and a partial answer revealed itself as soon as we found chunks of amber in the sand along with the bodies. Based on that and what we learned from Vex Bar’s system, we put together a working theory: Sgt. Vex Bar and his people were flying over the island en route to Island Southwest Quartus, which is home to an (allegedly) abandoned weapons depository, when the unit was ambushed and hit with amber rounds. The encased bodies were then freed from the amber and buried where they fell on Island Southwest Quintus.
“But why?” Commander Do wonders aloud as the support team continues to carefully uncover and remove bodies.
“Perhaps the global enclave knew Vex Bar would find something on Island Southwest Quartus they didn’t want found,” Erisia proposes.
“That wasn’t what I meant, sergeant, but your point stands nevertheless.”
“You mean why did our mystery attackers go through the hassle of freeing the unit from the amber and burying the bodies when they could have let them sink into the ocean?” I say.
“Exactly.”
“Because they wanted something the Vanguardians had.” As soon as I say this, Commander Do and I look at each other with matching expressions of dread. “Their astrarma.”
“What about their astrarma?” Erisia says.
Commander Do ignores the question for the moment and calls out to a member of CSI Kyros, ordering her to bring one of the bodies over. The technician floats one of the corpses over on a hovering platform, a maglev stretcher, so we can get a better look. I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from puking. The sand ants did a number on whoever this used to be.
Commander Do takes one of the corpse’s hands and gently turns it over. There’s a ragged, gaping gash in the middle of the palm. “Oh, hell.”
“Let me see,” the tech says. She slips on a pair of translucent goggles and hunches over the wound. “There are some signs of natural predation, but this central wound wasn’t inflicted by the sand ants.” The tech looks up. “Commander. The astrarma —”
“Check the other bodies. Now.”
The tech dutifully scurries off.
“Commander, what’s going on?” Erisia says.
“We can’t sit on this any longer,” I say.
“I know,” Commander Do says. She fixes me with a hard stare and says in whisper, “I want you to take your unit to Island Southwest Quartus. Check out the weapons depository. I want to know what’s there — or what was there.”
“The global enclave won’t like that.”
“They’re already unhappy with us,” the commander counters. “The way I see it, Sergeant Vex Bar’s mission was to examine the planet’s weapons stores. We’re simply picking up where he left off.”
I nod. “And if we encounter any resistance?
“Handle it. Delicately.”
***
Island Southwest Quartus lies to the west of Island Southwest Quintus. Alliance records on the weapons depository are skimpy. All we know is that it held weaponry of an unspecified nature up until twenty-four years ago, at which point said ordnance was dismantled and the depository was decommissioned and abandoned (or so the global enclave claims).
Point of interest, it was about twenty-four years ago that Olkos Secondus (grudgingly) signed onto the Festran Accords, a sweeping disarmament treaty among member and nonmember worlds in which the signatories agreed to dismantle existing stockpiles of anti-Vanguard weaponry and refrain from manufacturing new ordnance. The one section of the accords the global enclave did not sign off on pertained to periodic inspections to verify whether the signatory was honoring the agreement. The global enclave insisted on being taken at its word, and the Alliance capitulated as a show of good faith — and now it’s my job to determine whether that faith was justified, or whether Olkos Secondus is about to be named an enemy of the state at a time when we need as many friends as we can get.
No pressure.
“Eyes and other visual sensory organs open, people,” I say as we zero in on Island Southwest Quartus. The island is, at a glance, identical to Island Southwest Quintus, except for the big steel trapezoid in the center.
(Is that what you call a pyramid without a pointy top? A trapezoid? Whatever. Close enough. Not important righ
t now.)
“Grun, I want you, Knye, In May Mar, Brt-Por, and Gristell to be my eyes in the sky,” I say. “If you see anything that looks remotely hostile coming our way, you let me know, but do not take any offensive action until I give the order. Defense only, got it?”
“Understood,” Grun says, though he’s not happy about it.
His team assumes a high patrol orbit over the island while the rest of my unit follows me in. We land at the base of the depository, a structure the size of my high school’s field house, and circle around on foot until we find a pair of double doors tall enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through with room to spare.
“If anyone knows how we get in,” I say.
“A weapons depot like this is made to withstand a direct strike from a fusion bomb,” Johr says. “Easiest way in is with the access code to these bay doors.”
“The easiest way, but not the only way,” says First Rank Smiv, whose head looks disconcertingly like a horse’s skull (he’s freaky looking, but a really sweet guy).
“What’re you thinking?” I ask.
“A facility like this would have rooftop access for bulk loading and unloading into a warship. It might be more vulnerable to forcible entry.”
“Not by much,” Johr says. “Besides, powering our way in could trigger alarms.”
“Or a failsafe device that’d reduce the entire island to a crater,” Tosser says. “Safer play would be to try to hack the security system.”
“I’m all for keeping this operation as low-profile as possible,” I say, more to myself than anyone else. “Mova, get up here. I want you to try to crack the security.”
“Yes, sergeant,” Mova says, brushing past me as she breaks a calculator-like device out of a belt pouch.
“No heroics, Mova. If it looks like hacking the system will be more trouble than it’s worth —”
“I got this, sergeant,” she says with a confident smile.
I step back and let her do her job. Mova isn’t much of a fighter, but she knows tech inside and out. If anyone can break us in quietly, it’s her. She pops a small panel to the right of the doors and goes to work. It takes several minutes just to jack into the security system’s wireless signal, and then she gets to work in earnest. Her fingers dance over her little palmtop computer with blazing speed, her round little face utterly blank. She is deep in the zone, and I’m not about to throw off the emperor’s groove if I don’t have to.
Action Figures - Issue Seven: The Black End War Page 15
