Relic Hunted (Crax War Chronicles #2)

by Terry W. Ervin II

  The Crax took several steps forward, hissed, and flicked his halberd, striking the end of my bayonet. I’d experienced this intimidation tactic once before. This time, instead of a few of my bayonet’s sixteen inches being sliced off, the molecular blade slid along my blade’s length. I used that instant of surprise to surge forward and drive my weapon into his shoulder. My blade’s tip pierced where the banded layers merged and creased, allowing his arm’s movement. I yanked my bayonet free while moving left, backing away. Four inches of blood showed on my blade.

  Knowing my foe wouldn’t underestimate me again, I went on the offensive. The crenellated sheath protecting my shotgun’s barrel was made of a similar advanced alloy, but the rest was vulnerable to his halberd’s blade. I’d seen flatscreen vids of one slicing through a half-inch of hardened steel as if it were cardboard. My flesh and bones? They’d resist like tissue paper.

  He parried and redirected my attack, causing me to stumble.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lundox climbing over the barrier. I couldn’t worry about him.

  Getting to my feet, I raised my shotgun, locking my elbows and blocking a downward swing. The elite alien soldier pressed down, the scintillating molecular saw of his halberd’s blade biting into my shotgun’s crenelated sheath.

  “Hey, Crax bastard!” Dr. Lundox was standing next to one of the cascading ionizers, holding one of the fallen Crax’s halberds. I wanted to shout that they wouldn’t work in human hands, but if I didn’t maneuver and escape the blade pressing down on me, it’d bisect me easier than a knife passing through air.

  If I slid left or right, I’d lose my fingers. If I stepped forward, I’d be within easy reach of my faster, stronger, armored enemy. If I lurched back I might have a chance, or die, split wide open from head to crotch.

  My shoulders ached and my knees were buckling.

  “Come on, take me on instead!”

  We both ignored Lundox, until I heard a plunk, followed by fizzing.

  The Crax spun and I ducked, not fast enough. His armored tale slammed into my shoulder—a glancing blow that knocked me skidding across floor.

  Dr. Lundox screamed. He fell to the floor, doubled over, clutching his stomach.

  Dr. Goldsen shouted, “Commander Devans’ folly is reset!”

  I climbed to my feet, thinking, Devans’ folly? Reset?

  My shoulder hurt but it wasn’t broken. I’d have a nasty bruise, if I survived long enough for it to form. Already the elite Gar Crax warrior was turning to face me again. With Lundox’s interference, the single combat, halberd vs. bayonet was over. I flicked my shotgun’s safety off and fired, hoping the buckshot might damage my foe’s weapon.

  From above a hurled office chair slammed across the Crax’s back. More annoying than anything else, the alien ignored Frist’s failed bid to hurt him.

  I fired again and dove to avoid a spray of caustic pellets. My 12 gauge slug slammed into his faceplate, causing his head to jerk an inch or two. It must’ve thrown off his aim as the floor and barricade behind me sizzled as the pellets dissolved both stone and metal.

  Devans’ folly—the high voltage trap spread in front of the lab’s entrance had been reset.

  I emptied my shotgun, alternately hitting with buckshot and slugs, hoping to drive him back. He stood, jerking a little with each strike. My steel shot and lead slugs didn’t even scratch, let alone dent, his armor. He simply held his halberd steady, prepared to keep me and my bayonet at bay.

  Something like a lobbed baseball with nubby protrusions struck the elite Crax across the side of its face plate. A second hit it in the chest. Both splattered, spreading what looked like white paint across its armored face and chest.

  At the same time, from above, Frist opened up with a laser carbine. Two blasts struck it in the leg and tail. No damage, but another distraction.

  I charged. But before I could close the distance, the armor’s crystalline eye slits glowed, vaporizing the white paint. The Crax saw me coming and swung its halberd. I ducked aside while shifting my shotgun’s sheathed barrel to deflect the monomolecular saw blade.

  The strike knocked my shotgun from my hands. I rolled, stood and ran, trying to put distance between me and the Crax. MP and laser fire hit the advanced armor, unable to penetrate. MP rounds ricocheted off its back as it turned to close on me.

  I turned and stood in front of a cascading ionizer with revolver in hand. I thumbed back the hammer, waiting to get nailed with a hail of caustic pellets.

  They never came. The elite Crax warrior strode toward me, confident of its invulnerability to our weapons. It intended to cut me down—or slice me up. Didn’t matter. I took aim with my revolver, hoping to hit one of the eye crystals with my armor-piercing round.

  When the Crax was two steps onto the tarp, stepping over the gory, half-cooked fallen Crax and Stegmars, the lab’s lights dimmed. The whirring buzz of the ionizer slowed. The Crax stopped, jittering and awkwardly balanced.

  My shotgun was on the tarp, out of reach.

  “Kill it, Keesay!” Gorgio yelled. “We’re down to sixty percent power. Falling fast.”

  I stepped forward, feeling the electric tingle coursing through the stone floor. Taking aim, I fired an AP round into the shoulder I’d stabbed. The bullet penetrated, and toppled the six-hundred pound alien.

  “Fifty-two percent!”

  I aimed again, for an eye. Maybe the energy field around it would be drained, or at least weakened. My first round missed by inches, deflecting off with a dzzthing.

  From outside the lab, down the corridor, Stegmar sounding reached my ears. It wasn’t very far off, closing.

  “Fall back to the Cranaltar room,” I shouted before gritting my teeth and trying to keep my hand steady.

  Gorgio’s strained voice shouted, “Forty-one percent!”

  I held my revolver with two hands, took a steadying breath and fired. The crystal shattered, the head jerked back, and red blood began to pour from the penetrated armor’s eye socket.

  “Shut it down, Gorgio.”

  The sounding was getting closer.

  The tingling along the soles of my boots stopped. I raced forward and grabbed my shotgun. Climbing over the barricade, I saw Dr. Goldsen still at her desk, tapping and holding her thumb against the inset computer screen.

  I grabbed her by the arm, just as she unplugged a memory backup drive the size of a shoebox. “Load Unauthorized Access Virus Package One, commence,” she said. “Full memory wipe and Overwrite Protocol One.” I nearly dragged her out of her office and raced down the short hallway to the Cranaltar’s room.

  As soon as we were in, Gorgio keyed a pad and dropped the security door. The Stegmar sounding didn’t penetrate the door.

  Frist said, “Let’s hope they don’t have any more elite Crax with them.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t have any Selgum Crax either,” I said. “Weapons?”

  Dr. Goldsen held up her MP pistol. Gorgio had an MP carbine and MP pistol. Frist was slipping her last battery clip into her laser carbine. I pulled my MP pistol and handed it to her.

  I looked around. Except for the banks of computer screens and inputs, and the Cranaltar chair and metal parabolic dome above it, there wasn’t anything in the room to hide behind. Everything had been hauled out to build the main barricade.

  “Only the four of us?” Dr. Goldsen asked as I slid on my headset and adjusted the mic-ocular combo. Hints of despair hung in her voice.

  “See what communications you can stir up in here,” I said to her.

  I pointed. “Frist, take up position behind the chair. Gorgio, that alcove over there.” I started walking over to the wall-mounted computer where Dr. Goldsen stood. “Tell me if you notice anything.”

  “What?” asked Frist. “Like them blasting the door open?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.” Watching Dr. Goldsen bring the backup station online, I loaded shells from my bandoleer into my shotgun. Reloading my revolver came next. My bayonet? I left
it fixed to the end of my shotgun, Crax blood coating the end of its blade.

  Chapter 9

  It didn’t take the enemy long to find the main lab’s only exit, if it could be called that. There was little doubt the door led to us. The single activated security camera showed an estimated thirty Stegmar Mantises taking up position, preparing for an assault.

  All communications were down. Dr. Goldsen couldn’t reach anyone via her auxiliary station and my com-set gave off only digital static, including the Marine frequencies. Were we the only ones left? Was the counterattacking taskforce still fighting its way through? Was it repelled, or destroyed?

  A pair of Selgum Crax technicians hurried forward, presumably with acidic explosives to breach the door. Eight Gar Crax soldiers stood near the entrance, waiting. Several were bloodied with bandages applied to varying types of wounds. One directed six of the Stegmars, hauling bodies of their fallen to the side of the room.

  Maybe the Gar Crax’s shields were drained. In addition to them, there were more Stegmars showing up. But they’d all have to fight their way through the bottleneck, and we’d take a lot of them down before they got us. Unless they used a chemical grenade.

  No sense worrying about that.

  I signaled Gorgio over to me. She’d been steady and resourceful under fire. Everyone on Dr. Goldsen’s team had. It impressed me. They’d just lost six colleagues and were soon to die violently themselves. Nevertheless, they stood ready. Determined as any veteran I’d ever met. Not nearly as skilled, but equally determined.

  We positioned ourselves ten feet from the door. Since the enemy was going to breach it anyway, maybe we could make that objective more difficult.

  “Dr. Goldsen,” I said, “when I say, raise the door halfway, then drop it immediately.” I signaled Gorgio to kneel next to me. “As soon as it’s up, you open up. Just shoot.”

  Gorgio nodded. Frist came up on my right and knelt on one knee, shouldering her MP carbine. “Got it,” she said.

  “It will take one point three seconds to raise,” Dr. Goldsen warned, “and equal time to close.”

  We needed to delay them, even if the risk meant only a respite of a few minutes.

  I said to Frist and Gorgio, “No recoil from your carbines. Take a prone firing position. You’ll be able to shoot sooner and offer less of a target.”

  They complied without question and I helped them adjust to get into the proper position, offering the best chance for accuracy.

  “Take out the Selgum Crax technicians,” I said. “They’re the ones trained to breach the door.”

  I checked my ocular. “One is placing explosives now. One is further back, to the right. “Ready, ladies?” They had to know some armed Stegmars were facing the door, weapons ready.

  “Ready,” they replied in unison.

  I said, “On three, Doctor,” and counted.

  As soon as the door was six inches off the ground I sent a slug round into the Selgum Crax’s boot. The Stegmars had stopped their sounding. The wounded Crax curled into a ball after falling to the floor.

  I pumped, chambering the next shell while Frist and Gorgio finished off the wounded alien technician. I sent my second blast toward the nearest pair of Stegmar Mantises, already squeezing off return fire.

  Frist, to my left, released a sharp cry. Her head dropped, strands of red hair covering her face. She was down, maybe dead, but Gorgio kept squeezing out rounds.

  The door should’ve been down already.

  I fired a slug at another Stegmar and missed wide. Luckily I caught a Gar Crax in the calf.

  No shield.

  A needle took me in the hip. Gorgio took two in her shoulder. The door started dropping. I managed one more buckshot blast before it closed, most of my last shot knocking the downed Selgum’s body back a few feet. If it wasn’t dead before, there was no question about it now.

  Dr. Goldsen shouted, “Down and locked!”

  I set my shotgun aside and placed a hand on Frist. I had an anti-toxin syringe prepared. Gorgio was struggling to tear out her needles before I injected anti-toxin into her affected shoulder. They were in deep, biting into muscle like porcupine spines.

  Instead of doing the same for myself, I rolled Frist over, knowing what I’d find. She was dead, a needle through the left eye, into her brain. Nerve deadening toxin there—she died seconds after her head dropped.

  I injected the anti-toxin into my hip. It was already going numb.

  I moved to assist Gorgio. “Doctor, do you have pliers, anything to remove Stegmar needles?”

  She was already hurrying toward us, first aid kit in hand.

  And then there were three, I thought.

  If they got through the door, no way we’d stop them. Probably wouldn’t even slow them. But, with no energy shields? Few numbers? Unless they got reinforcements, after they took us down and found the entry to the Umbelgarri sector…their chances of getting very far were close to nil. Unless the Crax had already penetrated from another direction.

  I focused on my ocular still tied into the lab’s security camera. That was when I saw two Selgum Crax rolling something in on a cart. Cylindrical and steel, half the size of a coffin. On the end facing the camera was a square control panel with buttons and some sort of digital readout.

  “Is that a bomb?” I said to myself. Dr. Goldsen, working on Maintenance Tech Gorgio’s shoulder turned her head. Maintenance Tech Gorgio looked at me as well.

  Dr. Goldsen adjusted her glasses. “What did you ask, Specialist?”

  “I think they brought along a portable nuke.”

  Chapter 10

  Gorgio dragged Frist’s body into an alcove and covered her with a white lab coat. My anti-toxin injection had mostly worked, leaving me with the gait of a recovering stroke victim. I could walk, and maybe manage an unsteady trot without falling. I’d improve with time. Time we didn’t have.

  “All communications appear to be down,” Dr. Goldsen said.

  “If you’ve got any way to get through to our A-Tech neighbors, you might wanna do that,” I warned.

  Dr. Goldsen adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses. “I shall try again.” Her fingers began tapping at screen icons, followed by typing and voice commands.

  The Crax hadn’t bothered to take out the surveillance camera in the lab area. Maybe this group didn’t have the sensors to detect it. Or maybe they didn’t care.

  They were no longer preparing to breach the door leading to us, and had cannibalized our barricade to create one of their own. Seven Stegmar Mantises and one Gar Crax stood behind it, ready to fire on us should we open it.

  Behind them a Selgum Crax had a panel open on the four-foot long nuclear device. I’d extensively read about the Silicate War. We and the Crax were allies, along with all carbon-based intelligent life. I recalled a journal article with a partially digitized picture of a portable Crax nuke. It resembled what was in the other room. The one they had now was smaller, but that’s what it had to be. The Selgum technician was inputting commands through a small computer clip with a wired connection. A Gar Crax observed over the Selgum’s shoulder.

  I pulled my revolver from its holster and checked it. Six AP rounds. If I could get one into the nuke, maybe it’d do enough damage that it wouldn’t detonate. Or maybe it’d go off but not fully. Just spread radiation around without the associated heat and blast.

  But they’d moved it into Dr. Goldsen’s office, meaning that I’d have to fight my way through just about all of them to get a shot. And if anyone was coming from the other direction, Colonial Marines, or even Guymin or Vingee, they wouldn’t have a clear shot. If they or anyone were still alive.

  I tried my com-set again, simultaneously broadcasting to Guymin’s, Marine, and Colony Command’s frequencies. “This is Special Agent Keesay. We’re holed up in the Cranaltar room of the Cranaltar Research Facility. There’s only three of us left, with a mixed platoon-strength force of Gar Crax and Stegmar Mantis in the main research area. No elites in view. They app
ear to have a nuclear device and appear to be preparing it for detonation.” I took a long breath. “Device is in the main office, Dr. Goldsen’s office, straight ahead, about forty yards from the main entrance. Will attempt to reach and disable the device in one minute. Estimated chance of success, as close to absolute zero as can be calculated by your standard mainframe quantum computer.”

  That last part sounded pretty unprofessional. But the only ones hearing it were Tech Gorgio and Dr. Goldsen.

  Even if the Crax managed to fend off the counterattack taskforce, they may not have gained access to the Umbelgarri sector. This might be as close as they were going to get. Certainly Fleet was arranging for a follow-on relief force.

  And, if our taskforce did destroy or force the Crax assault ships to retreat, Colonial Marines were on the way down, and the Crax and Stegmars were doomed anyway. Setting off the nuke, even if it only destroyed the human sector of the colony? It’s what I’d do in their place.

  From all I’d read and experienced, the Crax and Stegmar were brave and determined, along the lines of our Colonial Marines. Both groups, better soldiers than me.

  Dr. Goldsen was still at her computer, trying to contact someone—anyone. Tech Gorgio stood next to a wall panel with a wrench in hand. She was hammering a plain section of wall with purpose. Morse code.

  Was that where a Bahklack had accessed this area of Dr. Goldsen’s lab, just before I went under the Cranaltar IV? Gorgio was a maintenance tech. If she didn’t know the exact location of the hidden access, she could make an educated guess.

  Did the Umbelgarri or their thralls even know Morse code, and if so, was there even anyone within earshot? I shook my head. The Bahklacks resembled four-foot tall fiddler crabs. And the low-slung amphibious Umbelgarri resembled salamanders, but the size of an alligator. Technically, I didn’t think either had bona fide ears.