Relic Hunted (Crax War Chronicles #2)

by Terry W. Ervin II

  “Okay, Dr. Goldsen. Activate Camera Two.”

  She did. Her computer relay showed a Gar Crax using its shield to push the slippery gel aside. There were three other Gar Crax with combat harnesses and weapons, and at least thirty Stegmar Mantis warriors standing against the walls. A Selgum Crax stood near the entry door, affixing some sort of metallic boxes and tubing on it. A Stegmar stood on each side, holding their sub-machinegun-like weapons ready. The Stegmars resembled mottled green and gray praying mantises wearing leather harnesses, standing on their four hind legs, holding their guns with the front two appendages. They had wings and could fly for short distances, which might allow them to reach the lab’s second tier. Prepping the defenders, I warned about that possibility three times. But I’d warned about many potential threats.

  Shoulder-mounted personal lights illuminated the hallway.

  It took less than three seconds to take that all in. “Shut it down.” A Gar Crax was already raising its halberd toward the distant camera. I should’ve just had it flicked on and off and reviewed what was captured in that instant.

  “Gorgio,” I called. “Turn on the corridor lights, now. All of them.” I wanted to get the Selgum technician near the door. Maybe burn up its equipment too.

  “Dr. Goldsen,” I said, “turn on Camera Two again.”

  After a few breaths, she replied, “It isn’t responding, Specialist.”

  Thinking that the Crax would be busy dealing with flames, I asked, “Can you flick Camera Three on and off and capture something. Fast enough that they won’t detect it.”

  “I shall try, Specialist.”

  Dr. Chahal glanced at me before checking his laser carbine again. Dr. Lundox glared at the door, jaw clenched and his laser carbine’s barrel resting under the open drawer of a steel cabinet. It provided a portal in our barricade to shoot through.

  Above to my left, Med Techs Yaley and Corbett leaned close to each other, talking, their MP carbines held loosely. And across from them, Maintenance Techs Gorgio and Yin both had their MP carbines trained on the door. I turned and nodded to analysts Bowser and Frist, standing beside the entrance to Dr. Goldsen’s office. They were our reserves, armed with MP pistols and carbines. Dr. Goldsen had her laser carbine sitting within reach on her desk.

  Not very much firepower to hold back all I saw, undoubtedly with more on the way. It would take time for the Hornet Nest’s task force to punch through. If it could, it’d take time for Colonial Marines to fight their way down to us—if the task force brought Colonial Marines in sufficient number.

  “I have something, Specialist. Shunting it to your ocular.”

  What I saw, I didn’t like. The Selgum was on the floor, writhing, as were a dozen Stegmar Mantises. But I also saw two elite Crax, in body armor. They were like plate armored medieval knights, and immune to my shotgun and revolver, even my AP rounds. Medium duty lasers and MP rifles wouldn’t penetrate the armor. Even the eye crystals, I suspected, were protected by a localized energy shield.

  “We took out a Selgum tech and a bunch of Stegmars,” I shouted. “That’ll delay them. There’s also two armored elite Crax. We need to save our door surprise for them. Other than my bayonet, we’ve got nothing that can penetrate their armor.” Awkward as it might prove to be firing from behind the barricade, I pulled and fixed my bayonet. “Unless any sharpshooters can hit their helmet’s eye crystals in quick succession.”

  Three or four minutes passed. Dr. Chahal wiped several beads of sweat from his brow. “Waiting is always the hardest,” I told him with a friendly grin.

  “While my knowledge on the topic may be limited, Specialist, newscasts suggest dying while fighting the Crax isn’t all that difficult to achieve.” He winked at me and then returned his attention to the doors.

  “Let’s not be achievers,” I said, thinking about asking Dr. Goldsen to attempt another flash view of the corridor.

  Dr. Lundox chimed in, “Agreed.” His voice held strain, detectable even through his surgical mask.

  “Every minute we wait,” I started to say to everyone, but never got to finish my thought.

  A hole the size of a softball punched through the bottom of the armored door. A faceted sphere the size of my fist shot through immediately after, rising in a zig-zag motion.

  “Take it out!” I began firing my shotgun even as I shouted. It had to be some sort of surveillance bot.

  Caught in our hail of fire, the small bot shuddered before dropping to the floor. Yin or Gorgio must’ve scored more hits. A splash of light formed around it as Lundox’s laser was on target. Buckshot from my third shotgun blast penetrated its depleted shielding, slamming it against the wall near the door. It sparked two or three times before coming to rest, now covered in slick gel.

  “Doctor,” I said. “Start up our new wall hangings.” They might hear me outside, and Dr. Goldsen would know what I meant.

  “Started, Specialist.”

  How much of a picture they got, I couldn’t be sure. “Shift your positions a step or two,” I said into my com-set, hoping their ear implants continued to receive despite the Crax’s proximity. I reloaded three buckshot shells.

  Everyone including me moved to our secondary forward position.

  Chahal sent a laser blast through the hole in the door. “Just keeping them on their toes,” he said.

  A buzzing, sizzling sound came from the entry. Smoking outlines showed where acid was eating through the doors.

  “We don’t want those falling inward,” I said, more to myself than anyone else before firing my shotgun. Everyone else opened up on the doors along with me.

  Their fire, especially the lasers, wouldn’t help much. It didn’t matter. We’d run out of living bodies long before we ran out of bullets or battery power for the lasers. After a few seconds the carved-out door sections lurched back, tipping away from us as they fell. Micro explosives, timed with the acid cutting, detonated a second too late for the Crax’s purposes, sending them spinning and slamming into the frames before dropping in the doorway.

  Everyone stopped shooting, waiting to see what would happen next. I hated reacting instead of causing the Crax to react, but we weren’t in any position to change that.

  Two grenades were lobbed in. The first was cylindrical and metallic. The second was bulbous with an opaque plastic covering. I’d already targeted the first and hoped someone got the second. Buckshot wasn’t good for shooting small targets. Still, one 00 shot struck the cylindrical device, sending it spinning to ricochet off the door frame. Before hitting the floor it detonated with a flash.

  The lab’s lights dimmed, but only for a half second. Maybe the lab’s hardened wiring and equipment was able to resist. Maybe I damaged the EMP grenade before it released its pulse. The bulbous grenade in front of us was hissing, spraying its chemical contents.

  Chahal and Lundox were firing at it, hitting it twice and silencing it. Another bulbous grenade came in. This had shielding that resisted several laser bursts and one of my shotgun blasts.

  I held my breath, thumbing shells into my shotgun and feeling the overpressure of air going past, carrying the enemy’s aerosol chemical through the doorway and into the corridor. What wasn’t blown out was being captured and zapped by the cascading ionizers. Or so I hoped because I had little faith in our surgical masks.

  Involuntarily, I tensed and gritted my teeth. The Stegmar predatory sounding. The intense, agitating clicking tore at my concentration, calling for me to panic—to run.

  I unsteadily held my shotgun ready, aimed toward the opening. To my left and right, Lundox and Chahal were trying to do the same. The enemy was coming.

  Dr. Goldsen’s audio program reverberated through the room, deadening most of the predatory sounding’s effects. When fighting the Stegmar on the Kalavar and on Tallavaster, I had a CNS modulator affixed to my neck and spine. It cancelled the effect. Eighty percent effectiveness would have to do. If we could break the Stegmars, their sounding would falter.

  A wav
e of the mantis warriors rushed into the room, at least a dozen, most running, with a few flying. They fired their Uzi-shaped guns, spraying the room with needle projectiles. Those on the ground skidded and slipped on the gel, slowing them and causing their aim to go wide and high.

  Goldsen’s staff returned fire, pouring it on. I emptied my shotgun. Dr. Lundox fell beside me, clumsily plucking at several needles buried in his face and left hand. A flying Stegmar made it to our barricade. I caught it on the end of my bayonet as it dove, and tore through its thorax, sending it flopping to the floor behind us.

  After injecting himself with a dose of Stegmar antitoxin, Dr. Chahal gave two injections to the fallen Lundox before helping him pluck the dozen needles buried in his skin.

  Analyst Bowser raced forward and took Lundox’s place, holding his carbine ready. I’d reloaded my shotgun, this time alternating slugs and buckshot. “Yaley’s down,” he said. “Frist is taking her place.”

  No more reserves, I thought, hearing the sounding in the corridor building again. “Chahal, we need you on the line.”

  This time two Gar Crax came forward, through the door. Along with my shotgun blast, laser and MP fire impacted their shielding. Unlike the Umbelgarri, Gar Crax energy shields faced only one direction. For now, toward us. They lowered their halberds and sprayed caustic pellets our way while striding deeper into the lab, using the bottom of their shield to scrape the slick gel and fallen Stegmars out of the way. It was like an invisible squeegee being pushed across the floor.

  Ducking and hearing the pellets sizzling into the metal of our barricade and the wall encompassing Dr. Goldsen’s office, I shouted, “Grenades!”

  To distract the Crax, I shut off my sound dampener, stood and opened up with my shotgun. Blam! Cachunk, blam! They’d shifted to form an obtuse angle with their shields to better cover each other’s back as they deliberately advanced. I guessed they’d even angled it to cover from gunfire from above.

  Bowser stood next to me as I ducked and shifted left. I popped up again and fired, seeing the grenades both bounce off the wall above the entry and clatter to the ground.

  After getting off two shots, Bowser took an acid round to the face. He dropped, clutching his cheek, screaming once, then nothing. I ducked as the grenades went off amongst a group of sounding Stegmars moving to reinforce the Gar Crax. We had to take them out without resorting to the electricity trap.

  After two explosions I stood again. The grenade blasts had scattered the Stegmars and caused one of the Gar Crax to stumble forward.

  Gunfire from above took the fallen Crax in the back, leaving the other one vulnerable. It panicked, turning to spray a line of caustic pellets at Gorgio, who’d taken his partner down. I opened up on the vulnerable Stegmars staggering back to their feet.

  Yin took up a new position, five arm lengths from Frist, but went down under a spray of Stegmar needles and Crax pellets. Nevertheless, the maneuver allowed Frist a shot. She took the Crax in the leg, crippling it. The alien hunkered down and called into a wrist communication device as the four remaining Stegmars crouched, returning fire, their sounding broken and silenced.

  I emptied my shotgun and drew my revolver. There were only four of us up and defending. Me, Chahal, Gorgio, and Frist.

  Chahal went down with a grunt, taking both a Stegmar needle in the throat and a Crax pellet in the shoulder. The former kept him from crying out in pain as he collapsed.

  An elite Gar Crax, protected by its overlapping bands of armor, leapt into the doorway and raced forward, halberd lowered and firing.

  I fired one armor-piercing round and ducked, shouting, “Jolt them now!” Even though the conductive gel had been scraped away from most of the tarp, flowing alien blood filled it. I prayed Goldsen was fast because the charging elite would be off the tarp in less than a second. Without a sound dampener, my ears rang from shotgun and revolver blasts. What if Dr. Goldsen couldn’t hear me?

  Before I’d finished that thought, flashing electrical fireworks commenced near the door. Buzzing energy surged up from the floor and through my boots. Brief clicking cries and screeching roars preceded a metallic clunk. Then everything fell silent, including the electrical current running through the stone beneath my feet.

  I peered over our damaged barricade. All of the aliens were down, dead with signs of charring. No worry of smelling the cooked flesh as wafts of smoke rising from them flowed into the hallway or disappeared within the cascading ionizers.

  On the ground next to me, Lundox was stirring, trying to get to his feet, while Dr. Chahal writhed on the floor. There was nothing I could do for Chahal. I’d experienced the pain a Crax weapon inflicted, and short of a major trauma center, nothing could save him. There might be something in the lab to knock him unconscious so he could escape the acid-burning pain coursing through his veins.

  Guilt tore at my guts for not at least kneeling to comfort him, but the enemy could make another push any second. My only option was to shoot him. End his agony.

  “Lundox, help Chahal if you can,” I shouted, thinking his ears might be ringing like mine. While scanning the room and watching the doorway I reloaded my shotgun. I didn’t know if there were any Stegmars or regular Gar Crax still out there, but there’d been two elite Crax warriors. Only one was on the edge of the tarp, armor locked in place like a fallen statue.

  Plus reinforcements could arrive to bolster their numbers at any moment.

  Above, Gorgio and Frist were still standing. Both were wide-eyed and shook up, but they still had weapons in hand, aimed toward the entry. When they looked my way I nodded and gave a thumb’s up.

  “Generator’s offline!” The ringing in my ears was receding, allowing me to hear Dr. Goldsen. She continued, reporting, “The Crax have cut our power. We’re on battery backup.”

  She dialed down the lab’s audio system that was still broadcasting to counter the now-silenced Stegmar Mantis sounding. Without announcing it, she turned on our third and only remaining security camera mounted in the hallway. My ocular showed the back of an armored elite Crax warrior exiting the room housing the generator, heading back toward us.

  I looked at the long bayonet mounted on the end of my shotgun. It was the only thing we had in the lab that would penetrate the advanced armor. Experience told me the medium duty lasers and MP carbines might leave a scratch. My shotgun’s rounds wouldn’t even do that. My revolver’s AP rounds might pierce the crystal eyes. A next to impossible shot. If I could stab between the overlapping layers, my bayonet would reach flesh. But how much would that do to a 600-pound Crax warrior, already stronger than me, not counting what its armor added.

  Dr. Chahal lay unmoving, dead like the systems analyst next to him. Lundox stood up and took position two strides to my right. I ordered, “Take Dr. Goldsen and retreat to the Cranaltar room.”

  I started to speak into my com-set to give the fallback order. He grabbed my shoulder. “No,” he said. “He’ll just follow. We have to stop him together.”

  The verse from John 15 bubbled up in my thoughts: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. How many Colonial Marines had done that, fighting to keep the Crax and Stegmar from reaching us? Resolve drove all fear from me.

  “I just hope to wound and delay him,” I said, removing my communication headset and climbing over the barricade. “Single combat. My bayonet can pierce his armor. Otherwise we have nothing here that can stop him.”

  I didn’t see Gorgio, but Frist stood, looking down at me with mouth open and eyes wide.

  As they’d only hinder me and not the armored Crax, I sliced through several of the surviving trip wires and said, “There’s only an armored Crax for the moment. If I stop him, we’ll get a breather.”

  I stood in the middle of the floor, holding my shotgun forward, presenting my shining Umbelgarri alloy bayonet. “If I can’t stop it, it’ll be up to the rest of you.”

  Somewhere, from the hidden depths of my mind came the word, Sit-thid-
zzah. I shouted the alien phrase as the elite Crax stepped into the doorway, halberd leveled, shimmering monomolecular blade whirring.

  It raised the barrel of its weapon and repeated in a synthesized yet reptilian voice, “Sit-thid-zzah.”

  I’d tried single combat twice before. The first time, such a warrior clipped off the end of my bayonet with a flick of its blade. If it hadn’t been for the Chicher diplomat jumping on its back and stabbing it with a poison-coated blade under the arm, I’d have died. That Crax had been busy crushing me down to the floor. The second time I’d faced an elite Crax in armor, with my current blade, I managed to surprise and stab him between the tail and leg. An armored personnel carrier’s auto cannon then opened up on him, allowing me to escape. The 25mm auto cannon didn’t kill it, just knocked it down, giving me time to run.

  We didn’t have anything like an auto cannon, so I stayed where I was, away from most of the fallen Crax and Stegmars. Tripping over one of them would end things for me that much sooner. Behind me, I heard Lundox moving, saying something into his collar’s micro communicator. I couldn’t worry about him, or anyone else. Even so, an image of Janice Tahgs, an administrative specialist from the Kalavar, flashed in my mind.

  I shook my head once to clear it and shouted, “Come on, Crax bastard. Let’s see what you’ve got.” Surprisingly, my voice hadn’t cracked.

  It stomped forward, kicking its dead allies aside, issuing a synthesized gurgle that I knew was laughter.

  He was apparently able to translate my words so I called over my shoulder, “Since you all decided against retreating remember, this is one-on-one combat. Just this Crax and me.”

  “Sit-thid-zzah go short,” the elite Crax said. He tipped his halberd toward me and then swirled it, gesturing to everyone else in the lab. “Nest troops, few life beats.”

  I laughed heartily. “Yes, you are going to die fast.”

  He stood up straight, towering above me, and then lowered into a combat stance. I hoped to anger and get him to rush me, but this Crax elite must’ve been too experienced to fall for that. I kept my bayonet extended, swirling it in a tight circle as I braced myself, prepared to spring. A Gar Crax could run twice as fast as any human. And his backward knee joints meant he’d be lightning-quick with forward leaps, despite his armor. I figured it had powered gears that not only increased his strength, but enabled him to move faster.