Anderson agreed, but he was concerned with a more immediate detail. According to the panel on the side of the wall, the elevator was down at the bottom level. If someone had gone into the lower floors of the base only to flee when they got word the Hastings was coming, the elevator should have been on the top floor.
“Something wrong, LT?” Dah asked.
“Somebody took that elevator down,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the panel. “But they never took it back up.”
“You think they’re still down there?” the gunnery chief asked, her tone making it clear she hoped they were.
The lieutenant nodded, the hint of a grim smile on his lips.
“So what happened to their ships?” Private Shay asked, still not piecing it all together.
“Whoever attacked this base came for something,” Anderson explained. “Whatever they were looking for wasn’t up here. They must have sent a team down to the lower levels to finish up the job. Probably only left a few men up here to keep an eye on things.
“But they weren’t counting on an Alliance patrol ship being close enough to respond to the distress call so quickly. When their scout ship sent word someone was coming through the mass relay they knew they had about twenty minutes to pick up and clear out. I bet they never even bothered to tell their buddies down below.”
“What? Why not? Why wouldn’t they tell them?”
“These elevators might go down two full kilometers,” Corporal O’Reilly chimed in, helping to spell it out for the inexperienced private. “Looks like the com panel to the lower level was destroyed in the gunfire. No chance of getting a radio message to anyone down below through that much rock and ore. And it could take ten minutes for the elevator to make the trip one way.
“If they wanted to alert their friends in the basement, it’d take half an hour: ten minutes to call the elevator up from the lower floor, ten minutes to send someone from the top down to warn them, then ten more minutes back up again,” he continued. “By then it’d be too late. Easier just to bug out and leave the others behind.”
Shay’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “They just abandoned their friends?”
“That’s what separates mercenaries from soldiers,” Anderson told him before turning his focus back to the mission. “This changes things. We’ve got an enemy unit down there, and they have no idea an Alliance squad is up above waiting for them.”
“We can set up an ambush,” Dah said. “As soon as those elevator doors open we start firing and rip those sons-of-bitches to ribbons!” She was speaking quickly, a wicked gleam in her eye. “They won’t stand a chance!”
Anderson thought for a second, then shook his head. “It’s obvious this is a seek-and-destroy mission: they aren’t planning on leaving any survivors. There could still be Alliance personnel alive on the lower levels. If there’s any chance we can still save them we have to try.”
“Could be dangerous, sir,” O’Reilly warned. “We’re assuming they don’t know we’re here. If they somehow do, then we’ll be the ones walking into an ambush.”
“That’s a risk we have to take,” Anderson said, slamming his fist against the wall panel to call the elevator back up to the surface. “We’re going in after them.”
The rest of the group, including O’Reilly, responded with a sharp, “Sir, yes, sir!”
The long, slow elevator descent was even more agonizing than the wait in the ship’s hull at the start of the mission. Minute by minute the tension grew as they sank deeper and deeper beneath the planet’s surface.
The lieutenant could hear the faint hum of the elevator winch, a dull drone boring into the back of his skull that grew steadily fainter but never entirely disappeared as they dropped ever farther down the shaft. The air became heavy, warm, and moist. He felt his ears pop, and he noticed a strange smell in the air, an unfamiliar stench he imagined was a mixture of sulfurous gases mingling with alien molds and subterranean fungi.
Anderson was sweating profusely beneath his body armor, and he kept having to reach up with a free hand to wipe away the fog condensing on his visor. He did his best not to think about what would happen if the doors opened and the enemy was ready and waiting for them on the other side.
When they finally reached the bottom of the shaft the enemy was waiting for them, but they sure as hell weren’t ready. The elevator opened into a large antechamber—a natural cave filled with stalagmites, stalactites, and thick limestone columns. The artificial lights strung across the ceiling illuminated the entire chamber, reflecting off thick veins of glistening metallic ore in the cavern’s countless natural rock formations. At the far end was a passage that served as the cave’s only other exit, a long tunnel that wound around a corner and out of sight.
The enemy forces, close to a dozen armed and armored mercenaries, were coming toward them from the far side of the chamber. They were laughing and joking, weapons at their sides as they headed for the elevator that would bring them back to the planet’s surface.
It only took Anderson a fraction of a second to decide they looked like murdering raiders and not Alliance personnel, and he gave the order to fire. His team had been poised and ready as the elevator doors opened and they reacted almost instantaneously to his command, charging forward from the elevator with a barrage of gunfire. The first wave of their attack ripped into the pack of unsuspecting mercs. The fight would have ended right then if it wasn’t for their body armor and kinetic shields.
Three of the enemy combatants dropped to the floor, but enough of the deadly projectiles were deflected or absorbed so that the rest of them were able to fall back and dive for cover behind the boulders and stalagmites that littered the cavern’s floor.
The next few seconds of the battle were utter chaos. Anderson’s team pushed forward, scrambling to use the cave’s rock formations for cover. They had to fan out quickly, before enemy crossfire could pin the entire group down in a single location. The cavern echoed with the staccato recoil of assault rifles and the sharp zip-zip-zip of bullets ricocheting off the rock formations and walls, and the incandescent tracer bullets that made up every fifth round ignited the room with a ghostly luminescence.
Sprinting to a nearby large stalagmite, Anderson felt an all too familiar shudder as his kinetic shields repulsed several shots that would have otherwise found their mark. He hit the ground and rolled as a line of bullets struck the floor just in front of him, disintegrating the stone and sending tiny showers of water and dust up under his visor and into his face.
He came to his feet spitting out the foul grit, instinctively checking the remaining power on his shields. He was down to twenty percent—not nearly enough to give him a fighting chance if he had to make another run through direct enemy fire.
“Shield status!” Anderson shouted into his radio. The numbers came back at him rapid fire: “Twenty!” “Twenty-five!” “Twenty!” “Ten!”
His team was still at full strength, but their shields had taken a beating. They had lost their initial advantage of surprise, and they were now facing an enemy squad nearly double their number. But Alliance soldiers were trained to work as a team, to cover each other and watch one another’s back. They trusted their teammates, and they trusted their leader. He figured that would give them the edge they needed over any band of mercs.
“Dah, Lee—move up on the right!” he barked. “Try to flank them!”
The lieutenant rolled to his right, emerging from behind the stalagmite shielding him from view and firing a quick covering burst in the direction of the enemy. He wasn’t trying to hit anything; even with the smart-targeting technology built into all personal firearms it was almost impossible to hit a humansized target without taking at least a half second to steady and aim. But inflicting damage was not his goal; all he wanted to do was disrupt the enemy so they wouldn’t have time to line up Lee or Dah while they alternately advanced, darting in and out of cover.
After a two-second burst he rolled back behind his own cover
; it wasn’t good to stay out in view in one place for too long. Even as he did so, Shay popped out from behind a large boulder to lay down another covering burst for his squad-mates on the move, and as he ducked back to safety O’Reilly filled in.
As soon as the corporal pulled back, Anderson poked his head out and fired again. This time he emerged from the left side of the stalagmite; jumping out from behind cover in the same position twice in a row was a sure way to catch an enemy round in the teeth.
He ducked back in and heard Dah over his radio saying, “In position. Laying down cover fire!”
Now it was his turn to move. “I’m on the go!” he shouted just before he scrambled out into the open, crouched low and running hard for another nearby piece of the cave’s natural architecture that was large enough to protect him from enemy bullets.
Skidding to a stop behind a thick column, he had just enough time to catch his breath and lay down covering fire as he ordered Shay and O’Reilly to make their runs.
Again and again they repeated the process; Anderson sending one person on the move while the others laid down covering fire to keep the enemy on the defensive. He varied who would go each time; the key was to keep the team moving and keep their opponents off balance. Staying in one place would let their enemies focus on them and bring multiple shooters to bear or, even worse, start lobbing grenades in their direction. But there had to be purpose and direction to the movement; they had to follow a plan.
For all the mayhem and random confusion of battle, the lieutenant had been trained to approach firefights like a game of chess. It was all about tactics and strategy, protecting and defending your pieces as you maneuvered them one by one to develop a stronger overall position. Working as a single unit, the Alliance squad was pushing its advantage one soldier at a time, slowly maneuvering themselves to where they could flank the enemy, drive them from their cover, and catch them in the crossfire.
The mercs could feel it happening, too. They were pinned down by the coordinated efforts of Anderson and his crew, trapped, virtually helpless. It was only a matter of time before they launched a suicidal counterassault or broke ranks in a desperate retreat. In this case, they chose the latter.
It seemed to happen all at once; the mercs burst from their cover, backpedaling toward the passage behind them as they fired wild bursts in the vague direction of the Alliance soldiers. Exactly what Anderson and his team had been waiting for.
As the mercs fell back Anderson stood up from behind the boulder he was using for cover. He was exposing his head and shoulders, but someone running backwards while shooting an assault rifle would be lucky to hit the broadside of a battleship, let alone a target half the size of a human torso. He braced his weapon on the top of the boulder to steady it, took careful aim at one of the mercs, let his weapon’s auto-targeting systems get a hard lock, then slowly squeezed the trigger. The merc did a short, stuttering dance as a steady stream of bullets depleted his shields, shredded his armor, and ripped through his flesh.
The whole sequence took maybe four seconds from start to finish—an eternity if they had been worried about someone on the other side calmly lining them up in their sights. But with that threat now gone, Anderson had more than enough time to guarantee his aim was lethally accurate. He even had a chance to line up a second merc and take her down, too.
And he wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the situation. All told his team dropped seven of the mercs during their desperate retreat. Only two managed to escape with their lives, making it to the safety of the passage and disappearing around the corner.
THREE
Anderson didn’t immediately send his crew chasing after the fleeing mercs. As soon as they lost visual contact with their enemy, pursuing them turned into a fool’s game. Every corner, turn, or branching hallway they’d come across would represent a chance for a potential ambush.
Instead, Dah, O’Reilly, and Lee took up defensive positions guarding the passage in case the mercs came back, possibly with reinforcements. With the only point of insurgence covered, Anderson and Shay were free to examine the bodies.
They’d killed ten mercs in the battle. Now they were picking through their corpses—a ghoulish but necessary denouement to every engagement. Step one was to identify any wounded survivors who could pose a potential threat. Anderson was relieved to find all of the downed figures were already dead. It wasn’t Alliance policy to execute helpless foes, but taking prisoners would have introduced a whole new set of logistical problems to a mission that was already complicated enough.
The next step was to try and identify who they were working for. Five of the dead were batarians, three were humans, and two were turians: eight males, two females. Their equipment was a hodgepodge of military and commercial arms from a wide variety of manufacturers. Officially recognized military units tended to be made up of a single species and carried only one brand of weapons and armor; the inevitable result of corporations signing exclusive supply contracts with the overseeing governments.
These were most likely soldiers of fortune, members of one of the Verge’s many freelance mercenary bands that hired themselves out to the highest bidders. Most mercs had tattoos or brands burned into their flesh proclaiming their allegiance to one group or another; usually prominently displayed on the arms, neck, and face. But the only markings Anderson found on the fallen were indistinct splotches of raw, scabby skin.
He was disappointed, but not surprised. For jobs where secrecy was important crews often had their markings removed with an exfoliating acid wash, then reapplied after the mission: a simple but painful procedure that was charged back to whoever had hired them. Obviously the group hired to attack Sidon had feared Alliance retaliation and done their best to remove anything that might expose them if something went wrong.
There had still been no counterattack from the enemy by the time Anderson and Shay finished stripping the bodies of grenades, medigel, and anything else useful and small enough to easily carry.
“Looks like they’re not coming out again,” Dah grumbled as Anderson came over to stand beside her.
“Then we have to go in after them,” Anderson replied, slapping a fresh power pack into his kinetic shield generator. “We can’t wait out here forever, and there’s still a chance we’ll find some of our own people alive down here.”
“Or more mercs,” O’Reilly muttered, replacing his own power pack.
The corporal was only saying what they were all thinking. For all they knew there was another full enemy squad deeper inside the base, and the two men who’d fled the battle had already managed to warn the reinforcements. But even though they might be walking into a trap, they couldn’t turn back now.
The lieutenant gave the rest of the team a moment to gear up before shouting, “Dah, Shay—take the point. Let’s move out!”
They advanced into the rough-hewn passage, maintaining a standard Alliance patrol formation—the two marines on point up front, Anderson and O’Reilly three meters behind them in the middle, and Lee three meters behind them watching their backs. They all had weapons raised and ready as they made slow but steady progress through the uneven, irregular tunnel that had been bored through the rock. They were officially in a hot zone now, and caution was more important than speed. One moment of careless inattention could cost all of them their lives.
Ten meters in, the corridor turned sharply to the left. The team stopped short at a hand signal from Dah, who crept forward and poked her head around the corner, momentarily exposing herself to possible enemy fire before ducking back. When she gave them the “all clear” they continued on.
Beyond the corner the passage continued for another twenty meters before reaching a sealed security door. The heavy metal barrier was closed and locked. Anderson signaled to O’Reilly, and the corporal moved forward to work his tech magic and override the lockdown codes. The rest of the team assumed standard positions for another flash-and-clear procedure.
“If those mercs are lockin
g the security doors,” Dah whispered to her commanding officer as they waited for the door to open, “then that means they have codes for the base. Someone on the inside must have been working with them.”
Anderson didn’t reply, but he gave a grim nod. He didn’t like the idea that someone inside Sidon had betrayed the Alliance, but it was the only explanation that made sense. The mercs had known the facility was expecting an off-world shipment, and they must have had the proper landing codes to get their ships on the surface without raising any alarms. They’d been familiar enough with the layout to clear out the upper area and make their way to the elevators at the back without letting anyone escape. And they had to have access to restricted lockdown codes to seal the security door. All the evidence pointed to the inescapable conclusion that there had been a traitor at Sidon.
The door slid open and the team sprang into action, using a flash grenade to blind anyone on the other side, then charging in only to find the area beyond empty. They were now standing in a large square room, about twenty meters on each side. The shiny metal walls, ceiling, and reinforced floor made it clear they were now entering the heart of the research facility. Everything had a sleek, modern feel; a sharp contrast to the rough-hewn natural tunnels they had just passed through. There was a hall leading off to the left, and another to the right.
“I’ve got a blood trail over here,” O’Reilly called out on the left. “Looks fresh.”
“We follow it,” Anderson decided. “Lee and Shay, set up position here.” He didn’t like splitting up the team, but they didn’t know the layout of the base. He didn’t want any of the mercs doubling around behind them and making it back to the elevator. “Dah, O’Reilly—fall in!”
Leaving the two privates to guard the only way out, Anderson and the others set off down the hall on the left, moving ever deeper into the research complex. They passed several more intersections, but Anderson wasn’t willing to split his squad up yet again. Instead, the three of them simply followed the blood trail. Along the way they passed a number of rooms, most of them small offices, judging by the desks and personal workstations. Like the dorms on the upper levels, each had been thoroughly ravaged by gunfire. The killing spree that began on the surface had continued unabated underground. And once again the mercs hadn’t been content to leave their victims where they had fallen, but for some inexplicable reason had dragged them off.
Mass Effect: Revelation Page 4
