by Doug Hoffman
“Just so, Captain,” the station Trader answered, still winded from the arduous descent. “I am sure you are wondering how to gain access to the vault.”
“That question had crossed my mind. Have you a suggestion?”
“Of course, Captain. I have given your partner, Ooshnar-tar-rak-ra, instructions for opening the door. I suggest we approach the entrance by moving around the perimeter of the courtyard—no sense tempting fate after coming this far, eh?”
“I am a cautious man myself,” the Captain replied, then to his people more privately, “The head weasel suggests we sneak up on the place, making me think that there is danger afoot. Move around the perimeter to the right, Bear and Sanchez take point. And someone keep an eye on Ooshnar, evidently he has the combination.”
The expedition edged cautiously around the edge of the open courtyard, keeping under cover of the overhanging balcony that bordered the open space on three sides. A number of dark passageways led off from the yard, attracting nervous attention from the Marines and SEALs. Eventually they were all stacked along the wall at the junction with the face of the vault.
“This looks like the moment of truth,” Jack said. “Bring our pet traders and let's go knock on the door.” Bear, Sanchez, Samuels and Feldman led off, followed by the Captain and the traders. White and Ogawa assumed weasel herding duties. JT hung back with the sleds and the other half of the force. All were mostly ignoring the station Trader and his entourage.
Quietly, the native traders slipped away down the nearest darkened hallway. Hitch, perched on his hover sled, noticed the exodus first. “Hey, Lieutenant! The locals are making a break for it!”
“What?” JT spun around and saw the last cinnamon furred shape disappear into the gloom. “Chief, you and the boys hunt them down.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” responded CPO Morgan. The three SEALs disappeared down the hallway in pursuit.
“Captain, our native bearers have flown the coop. I sent the SEALs after them.”
“Roger that. The rest of you come to my position. We can use the sleds for cover and we may need some of the equipment they carry.”
On suit-to-suit, Rosey said, “anybody else think we have just stepped in it?”
“Nothing I like better than an exposed position with my back against the wall,” answered Ronnie, breaking into a jog. “In this case literally.”
Pursuit and Betrayal
A little over a hundred meters into the passageway, the SEALs came to an intersection with side passages leading off in either direction. They had been using infrared trackers to follow the faint footprints of the fleeing natives.
“Damn it, the tracks go all three directions,” said Phil Kowalski.
“Which way, Chief?” asked Bud Jones.
“These passageways could go on for ever,” said the Chief. “We go back.”
“I got movement,” said Kowalski, crouching down, railgun at the ready, “left passageway.”
“Is it one of the weasels?”
“No, heat signature is all wrong.”
“Let's back out slowly.”
Phil stepped back from the intersection a fraction of a second before a brilliant orange flash lit the hallway. All three SEALs flattened themselves against the walls.
“Plasma bolt,” said Phil.
“Ya think?” said Bud.
“Bigger than the ones the killer chickens used,” said the Chief. “It's time for the better part of valor.”
As they started to move back toward the entrance a light appeared deeper within main passageway. It hurtled toward them like a demented freight train careening down a tunnel.
“Cover!” the Chief yelled. He and Phil pressed themselves against the right-hand side of the hallway, Bud sucked floor. The plasma bolt made a glancing strike on the left-hand wall, showering the SEALS with sparks and leaving a glowing red streak that slowly faded as it cooled.
All three returned fire, sending a torrent of green tracers down the hallway. Bud and Phil turned and shagged ass down the hallway, leaving the Chief firing extended bursts of 5mm in the direction of the enemy, with an occasional 20mm round thrown in for good measure.
“Peel left,” called Phil, halting ten meters back.
The Chief turned and ran down the right side of the hall in a crouch while Phil provided suppressing fire. As he passed Phil, Bud called “peel right,” from ten meters farther down the hall. Both the Chief and Phil ran down the left side of the hallway while Bud covered. They continued with the three man Australian Peel until they burst into the courtyard and flattened themselves against the wall on either side of the passageway entrance.
The Chief keyed his comm: “Captain, we got company.”
* * * * *
Upon arriving in front of the cyclopean vault door, Ooshnar-tar-rak-ra retrieved a piece of paper from his belt pouch and unfolded it. While mumbling and staring at the squiggles inscribed on the sheet, the trader punched a series of symbols on a control panel next to the door. He finished entering symbols and looked up expectantly. A loud mechanical clank sounded and the door swung smoothly open.
“That thing has to be two meters thick,” said JT. “I bet it weighs a hundred tons.”
“In keeping with the scale of the station,” Jack agreed. “Dr. Ogawa, fetch your equipment from the sleds.”
“Yes, Captain.” Mizuki went to the sled driven by Steve Hitch and began rummaging around in the cargo it carried. Then came the warning from Chief Morgan: “Captain, we got company.”
The Captain and half the squad turned to see the SEALs flattened against the side wall. Before anyone could speak two orange plasma bolts flew from the passageway the SEALs had just emerged from. The SEALs were immediately in motion, headed for the knot of expedition members clustered around the still opening vault door. As the Chief passed in front of the passageway he threw something the size of a grapefruit into the opening.
“Those plasma bolts were much more powerful than the ones the raptors used,” commented JT as he scanned the surrounding balconies for movement. From the passageway came the muffled whomp of an explosion followed by the ejection of a fast moving object.
“I think we got spiders,” said Joey Sanchez. He, along with half the members of the expedition, had participated in the battle on the Space Mushroom. There they had been accosted by several forms of cybernetic creatures, the spiders being the most common.
“What makes you say that, Sanchez,” asked Bear, also scanning overhead for threats.
“That, LT,” Sanchez replied, pointing to the dented silver ball that skidded past in front of their position, shedding spindly legs as it began to bounce and roll.
Movement erupted everywhere—silver spheres, twice the size of basket balls, streamed from hallways around the courtyard and lined the balconies above. Each was suspended from six slender multi-jointed legs that emerged from the tops of their bodies. From the bottom of each sphere hung a weapon—a plasma blaster. From courtyard and balcony the alien host opened fire.
“Spiders! Return fire,” yelled Jack as angry orange plasma bolts splattered the deck and the wall behind the Earthlings. “White, Ogawa, get inside the vault and find those AM eggs.”
“Where did the damn spiders come from?” asked Joey, firing into the mass of bobbing spherical bodies.
“They were on the Moon and the Space Mushroom, why not here?” yelled Jon.
“That was 1,500 light-years away, Jon.”
“Who knows? Maybe you can just order them from DarkLord.com,” replied Ronnie. “Shut up and kill the damn things.”
Bear roared and swept the perimeter of the courtyard with a stream of 15mm explosive rounds, temporarily neutralizing the ground-level threat. The Marines directed their fire upwards, spraying the balconies with flechettes at maximum muzzle velocity. As the SEALs joined the knot of defenders in front of the vault, Feeshkar made a break for the sidewall exit. Bud spun and raised his railgun, but the fleeing weasel was struck by several plasma bolts before
the SEAL could shoot. Having no armor, most of Feeshkar's body was vaporized and the rest reduced to charred chunks.
As Betty was distracted by Feeshkar's fatal desertion, Ooshnar-tar-rak-ra and Poonta-ta-ka ran the other way, scurrying over the door's armored threshold and into the vault.
“Come on Mizuki!” Betty called, running after the trader. Mizuki, her arms loaded with antimatter detection gear, turned her back to the enemy and ran toward the open vault. Ahead of her, the flock of butterflies, showing nothing but bright scarlet, streamed through the opening.
Along the edges of the surrounding balconies hostile spiders began jumping off and floating to the courtyard floor. The Marines and SEALs picked them off almost as fast as they jumped, but the spiders were jumping to make room for a larger threat. Much bigger creatures appeared and began firing cannon sized plasma weapons at the defenders.
“Screw the spiders,” yelled Sanchez, “we got crabs!” The larger creatures, dubbed crabs, also had six legs and a plasma weapon underneath, but they were the size of a small tank and almost as hard to kill.
A bolt from a crab struck one of the sleds sending burning chunks of equipment and a spray of molten metal flying. The SEALs dove for cover, their lighter armor incapable of deflecting the more powerful blasts from the bigger aliens. Several more cannon blasts struck the wall above the defenders, sending showers of sparks raining down. A cannon bolt missed the Captain by less than a meter. A short strangled cry came over the comm.
Jack turned and saw Mizuki laying face down in the vault's doorway. The bolt that had just missed him had struck her from behind. Her suit was scorched and worse, both her legs were missing from the knees down.
Shit! Light armor is not good enough in this environment. “Chief, you and the SEALs get Dr. Ogawa into the vault and take cover inside.”
“Aye aye, Captain. Bud, Phil, grab Mizuki and move, now!”
Each grabbed an arm and together they pulled the astrophysicist's inert form into the vault. Chief Morgan bounded through the opening as crabs began to leap onto the courtyard floor.
Inside the Vault
The SEALs dragged Mizuki's body away from the open door and rolled her onto her back. Her face was wide-eyed, mouth open in a wordless scream of pain. As they watched, her suit's auto-doc flooded her system with painkillers. Her face went slack and her eyelids slowly closed. At the same time, nanites in her suit sealed off the stumps of her legs and restored its atmospheric integrity. The cloud of butterflies pulsated above her supine body, alternating between blood red and deep indigo.
“Doc, we got a casualty!” yelled Chief Morgan, turning around to look for Corpsman White. What he saw was Betty standing with her weapon raised, trying to get a shot at Ooshnar-tar-rak-ra, who was cowering behind a freestanding console ten meters away.
“We got a problem here Chief,” Betty said, not taking her eyes off the trader. “The little shit is trying to close the door and lock the others outside.”
“Don't fire at me or you will set off the antimatter!” the trader blustered, making a move for the controls. “Let me close the door or we will all die!”
“What's he babbling about?”
Betty sent a three shot burst in the trader's direction, causing the treacherous weasel to pull back from the controls.
“Look around, Chief.”
Glancing around the huge vault, the Chief could see rack upon rack of large AM containers.
“There must be hundreds of eggs in here!”
“Yeah. I don't think flechettes will penetrate them, at least not on the lowest velocity setting, but I'm afraid to just hose down the control console.”
Before Chief Morgan could answer, the flock of butterflies rushed the console, surrounding the traitorous trader. Ooshnar swatted ineffectually at the swarming winged creatures, but his flailing could not prevent them from alighting on his person. His yells of aggravation changed to shrieks of pain as flashing sparks and the crackle of electric discharges engulfed his struggling form.
The trader fell from sight behind the console, leaving a few wisps of smoke rising above it. The swarm rose above the smoldering alien in a helical column, flashed to black and streamed back to orbit above the fallen Mizuki. Betty and the Chief looked at each other and then cautiously advanced on the control station.
“It looks like Mizuki's fan club fried his double crossing ass,” Betty remarked with some satisfaction.
“Yeah, and I thought they were just defenseless butterflies.” Chief Morgan flipped the trader's body over using the toe of his boot. A piece of folded paper fell from the dead alien's grasp. “Look, it's the instruction sheet.”
* * * * *
Outside the vault the enemy assault intensified. The second sled was blasted by crab bolts, which threw Brown and Feldman back against the open vault door. They had been using the sled for cover. The Captain was standing behind JT and Sanchez, using their heavier suits to shield his light armor. Several of the Marines had taken spider hits on their armor but none had been struck by the more deadly crab bolts.
“Lt. Bear, we need to withdraw to the inside of the vault. Provide covering fire. Lt. Taylor, get the Marines inside.”
“After you, Captain,” JT said on suit-to-suit.
“You have your orders, Mr. Taylor,” was Jack's terse reply.
JT wanted to argue with him but had been a solider too long to do so. “Let's go Marines, into the vault, move it.” One by one, firing at the enemy as they retreated, the Marines escaped to safety through the open vault door. Then it was Jack's turn.
“Follow right behind me, Bear,” the Captain said as he turned and jumped through the portal. Bear answered with a low growl and backed in behind him, all the while spraying the courtyard full of cyborg attackers with 15mm shells.
At the control console, Betty had the bright idea of asking M'tak for help translating the instructions. The ship's AI quickly scanned the alien scribbling using Betty's suit video and responded almost instantly.
“The five characters on the lower left-hand side are the door closing code. Press the matching symbols on the control panel in sequence, reading from right to left and the vault should close.”
“Great! Thanks M'tak. Captain, we can shut the door once everyone's inside.”
“Good,” Jack replied, taking a position just inside the door. Bear was still backing into the vault, still returning fire when the doorway was engulfed in a hellish orange glow. Bear roared and flew backward into the vault, smoke rising from his left side where the refractory armor was still glowing cherry red. It took a second to register, but Jack noticed that smoke was also rising from Bear's right shoulder, where his right foreleg used to be. The impact of multiple plasma bolts had caused his suit's shielding to fail.
Bear! Jack almost ran to his friend's side. A bolt from a crab cannon had struck Bear's unshielded right arm and railgun straight on, vaporizing both weapon and arm almost to the shoulder. Bear's auto-doc tranquilized the wounded ursine, freeing him from pain and preventing him from doing further damage to himself. Quickly recovering from the sight Bear's terrible wound Jack silently cursed. The cost of this damned mission is becoming unacceptably high.
“Corpsman White, on my signal close the vault door.” Jack pulled a tube from his suit's backpack, a meter long and twelve centimeters in diameter. “Close it now!”
Betty pressed the five symbols in sequence and the door began swinging shut. Jack balanced the tube on his right shoulder and stepped in front of the closing door. Something shot from the tube and the Captain quickly stepped back behind cover.
The door was almost closed when a blinding white light flared around its edges. The vault door snapped shut and a massive tremor shook the room. Expedition members were thrown violently into the air, several bouncing off of the ceiling.
The vault went pitch black.
Chapter 23
Farside Defense Perimeter
“Farside Control, Base Defense. We are about to commence a l
ive fire exercise in the space above the base,” called Clem. Next to him, Lem held a tablet interfaced with the fire-control computer that directed all of the railgun emplacements ringing the base.
“Roger, Base Defense, the space above Farside is free of traffic at this time. You are clear to proceed.”
“Affirmative, Farside Control, we are going hot.” Clem spoke to Lem on suit-to-suit. “Let's do it, buddy.”
“Right, I've got it set to lay down an interweaving pattern 1,000 klicks out. Each tube will fire four rounds for a total of twenty four.”
With a gloved finger, Lem tapped on the tablet. Immediately the railgun in the enclosure in front of them spun and tilted. The barrel recoiled four times, jumping about a meter each shot before returning to battery. The salvo complete, the gun returned to its initial vertical position.
“Hot damn! Looks like they all fired successfully.” Lem was staring down at the tablet's display which showed the status of all six railguns in the system.
“Finally,” exclaimed Clem. “I was starting to doubt these things would ever work. It was adding the short recoil mechanism that did it.”
“Yep, took enough of the kick out of firing to keep the mounts from breaking under the stress. Let's fire another salvo.”
“You are like a kid with a new toy,” Clem said to his friend, though he too was wearing a big grin. “Just make sure you aim all the projectile trajectories toward the Sun.”
“Why? The slugs are just going to wiz off into space?”
“They have a muzzle velocity of over 17km/sec. You shoot in the wrong direction and one day, in a hundred thousand years or so, some poor creature on an alien world could have a very bad day.”
“I thought that the escape velocity at Earth's distance from the Sun was around 41km/sec?”
“Yes, but Earth, and the Moon, are orbiting around the Sun with a velocity close to 30km/sec. Fire in the same direction Earth travels in orbit and the slugs will have enough total velocity to leave the solar system for good.”
