Victory on Terra

by Terry Mixon

  “The gauges weren’t designed for this type of long-term use, and they’ve failed in a linear fashion. At least that allows us to make some estimates by looking at the indicators.”

  Jared looked over the stack of supposedly full bottles. There weren’t that many of them.

  “How long are you expecting to need to be down there?”

  Carl shrugged. “Until we get there, I can’t make any guesses. If the shielding is actually in place, we may only need to service the reactor before bringing it online. I don’t want to commit to that without seeing things, though.

  “I think this first trip is going to be an exploratory one. We’ll just make it down to where the fusion plant is, make an assessment, run diagnostics if possible, and then return to this level to work out a battle plan.

  “There are a lot of air bottles being brought in, and in a city this size, I suspect we’re going to have more than enough. It’s just going to take time to gather them.

  “Right now, you’re only bringing in the ones closest to the air handler room. To get more, we’re going to have to move farther out, and that’s going to take additional time and effort.”

  Jared thought about that and nodded reluctantly. “I can shepherd the search for more air. How long until you’ve got enough for the four of you to start down and make an assessment?”

  Carl considered that for a moment. “I think we’ll have enough in about an hour. We won’t really know until we see how far it is to the fusion plant and what the obstacles are. We’re going into this with a decent margin for error. If we use forty percent and we’re not at the target, we’re going to turn around and start back up.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Jared said. “I want all of you to be very careful. Not only are you irreplaceable as friends, but you’re also the only technical support we’re going to have when we get to the Imperial Palace. You’re doubly important, and I don’t want you to take any unnecessary chances. If you run into trouble, abort the mission and come back up. I’ll deal with our captors if it comes to that.”

  Carl looked over at the guards. “I sure hope you’re right about that because they seem determined to get the fusion plant online.”

  Jared considered the armed men watching them and nodded. “They are, but diplomacy is the art of the possible. We have to give this everything we have because that’s the simplest way to get us out of the city and on our way. If the fusion plant is functional, then we can start looking at the trains and make an assessment of how far they can get us. All I’m saying is to do the best you can and be careful.”

  With that, Jared grabbed his now-empty cart and started back to get some more supplies. He really did hope this plan worked, because the horde would never let them ride away. Their only chance of escape was underground.

  If Carl failed to get the fusion plant online, they might very well be trapped here for the rest of their lives. However short a time that might be.

  The rally point for the defensive forces was a large room at the base of one of the massive towers toward the center of the city. Kelsey thought it might once have been an indoor sports arena, based on the movable stadium seating.

  The gathering included more people than she’d expected. Her implants calculated that there were probably seven hundred and fifty defenders gathered in the vast space.

  She had no idea what the population of the dead megacity was, but if this was their defensive force, then the overall population had to be lower than she’d anticipated. Of course, there could be other gatherings. She had no way of knowing.

  As far as the armament that they had available, they had the usual primitive weaponry that was commonplace in these days without technology, but that wasn’t all.

  Arrayed against the rolled-back seating were tables holding a sampling of intriguing weapons. Some held what looked like grenades. Others held primitive firearms, similar to those used in the prespaceflight wars on Terra: pistols, short rifles, and long-barreled weapons. Even what might be simple rocket launchers. In all, a respectable arsenal.

  Kelsey wished she had more time to examine them, but a short woman with gray hair motioned for everyone to gather around her. The woman didn’t bother introducing herself, which made sense since everyone beside Kelsey probably knew who she was.

  “We’re going to go with defense plan Charlie,” the woman said with no preamble. “We’ll fan out to meet the incoming groups at the designated ambush zones for their path of advance. If we can push them back, fine. If not, we fall back and strike them again at the secondary locations.”

  The woman turned in a slow circle to examine everyone as they absorbed her words. There was far less murmuring than Kelsey had expected. These people knew what they were about. That boded well for them all.

  “Our goal is to bleed them,” the woman continued. “If we inflict enough casualties, they’ll retreat. At least that’s the theory. If it doesn’t work out that way, we may end up fighting hand to hand. In that case, reducing their numbers is going to be critical because they’ll outnumber us badly if we don’t.

  “I don’t have to tell you how important this is. If we want to keep our families and friends safe, we have to stand between them and the horde. I expect everyone to give this everything they have. Group leaders, take command of your forces and fight like hell. Dismissed.”

  A thin man with fringes of reddish hair around the base of his bald skull gestured for Kelsey to join him. It looked like a hundred people or so were gathered under his metaphorical banner.

  “My name is Charles Davis,” he said to Kelsey. “I want you to stick near me while we do our thing. Leader Mordechai has indicated that we’re to trust you with your weapons, but I want you to know that I’ll have my eyes on you. If you try to betray us, we’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not going to betray you,” Kelsey said firmly. “We want to make the horde pay just as badly as you do.”

  The man considered her for a moment and then nodded with seeming satisfaction. “Excellent. I understand that you’re trained in the use of Imperial technology. None of what we have available is of that caliber, and it will have to be explained to you. Step over to the table so that I can show you what we’ll be working with.”

  He picked up one of the grenades and showed it to her. “This metal ball contains explosives, and the shell becomes shrapnel. To use it, one pulls the pin and throws the grenade. The spoon is spring loaded and flies up when you release it, lighting the fuse.

  “Once you pull the pin, Mister Grenade is no longer your friend. You’ll have roughly seven seconds before it explodes. The lethal radius is about ten meters, so keep that in mind. Aim for clusters of the enemy, and avoid your allies. It’s quite effective if one can throw it far enough.”

  He examined her critically. “I’m not certain this is an appropriate weapon for you. To get one on target requires pinpoint accuracy and a bit of upper-body strength if one doesn’t want to be too close to the target.”

  She smiled toothily. “I’m a lot stronger than I look, and my aim is exceptional. Trust me when I say that I’ll be better at getting those on target than many of your own people.”

  He didn’t seem convinced but didn’t argue. Instead, he set the grenade down and picked up one of the metal tubes Kelsey had decided were rocket launchers. With a tug, he extended the tube even farther and revealed that it was about a meter long at that point. Two small sights popped up along the top as well.

  “This is an antipersonnel rocket. They’re constructed much like the grenades, as far as the explosive goes, but each has a chemical charge that propels the payload to its target. Basically, you take the tube that you’ve extended, rotate it onto your shoulder, line your sights up with the target, and then squeeze down this trigger along the top surface. It requires firm pressure to depress and is a one-shot, throwaway model. Once it’s done, it’s done.

  “You’ll want to be certain that no friendlies are behind you, as the propellant will kil
l at close range and maim for a distance beyond that. Best to make sure by calling out ‘backblast area clear’ and waiting for a positive response unless you are absolutely certain that no one you care for is behind you.”

  He did something to the tube and collapsed it back down again. Once that was done, he set it on the table and picked up one of the primitive firearms. It definitely looked like something out of one of the World War II movies that she’d seen in vids.

  “This is a chemically based firearm. They’re based on something we found in a museum after Terra fell. Basically, when you pull the trigger, a striker pin sets off a small priming charge that is built into the bullet, which in turn ignites gunpowder inside the brass case. That pushes a lead slug coated with copper down the rifled barrel, which imparts rotation.

  “It’s a fairly significant weapon at short range and can penetrate horde armor. Each of us will be issued one of these and several magazines of ammunition. More ammunition will be provided by people that are keeping us supplied during the fighting.

  “We have short rifles that can fire very quickly, firing until you release the trigger or the weapon is empty. We call them submachine guns. In tight spaces, they are quite lethal. Also, very loud. They use the same ammunition as the pistols.

  “In fact, the magazines will fit in either weapon, though the submachine guns will empty a pistol magazine in a few moments. The submachine gun magazines will work for the pistols but make them somewhat unwieldy. The pistols require a trigger pull for each round fired.

  “Finally, there are longer weapons, but they are hard to make and difficult to form in a way that makes them accurate. The few we have will go to our snipers. They’ll help us disorganize the enemy and make it so that we can perhaps attack them without them using their full capabilities in turn.”

  He focused his full attention on her. “They have rockets of a sort that are much more powerful. They are designed to penetrate Imperial armor.”

  Kelsey felt her face close down. “We’ve encountered them, and I’ve lost friends to them. I’ll make sure those bastards die first.”

  The man smiled for the first time. “That’s a plan that I can get behind.”

  He issued her a submachine gun, a pistol belt, and ammo for both and returned her swords. She settled everything into place and stuck close to his side as he started gathering his people and heading out.

  She didn’t have the same bloody rage that Julia did, but she also had a score to settle with the horde. Killing their leadership wasn’t enough. She intended to send them racing back to their city with their tails between their legs today.

  Those she didn’t manage to kill. They’d pay for what they did today. On the souls of her dead people, that she swore.

  12

  Carl hefted the makeshift harness that held his equipment, making the air bottles rattle in their mesh. He felt a little overloaded. Well, better that than dead.

  The others were similarly arrayed. Ralph had more air than Austin, but that was only because the hacker didn’t need to worry about having that much equipment. Everything he required was in his implants, and all he needed was the appropriate gear to be able to link in with whatever he was going to be accessing.

  Austin carried a lot more equipment. If they needed to work on anything, it would require a separate tool. That meant that the rest would have to carry sufficient air for him.

  Thankfully, Julia would be able to carry a hefty reserve because of her augmentation. The woman, though small, was heavily laden with air bottles and gear. Carl figured they had enough air to stay down there for a couple of hours before needing to return to the safer levels.

  “Are you boys ready to go?” Julia asked, her voice tinged with impatience. “I’d rather get this underway now so that we can get back up here sooner. If there’s trouble, I don’t want to be caught down there.”

  Carl didn’t disagree. The sooner they dealt with any problems with the fusion plant, the sooner they’d be able to get on with their real business. If the horde managed to overwhelm the defenders, he’d rather not be caught down where he couldn’t even breathe without assistance either.

  “Let’s do this,” he agreed.

  From what Mordechai had told them, they’d need to go to the nearest stairwell leading down—which his son had already pointed out to them—and start the process of entering the lower levels. They’d need to switch stairs below, as this one didn’t go deep enough.

  As they grew closer to the target, there would be signs indicating where to exit the second set of stairs. The older man had no idea how far down that was, but the old stories had indicated that it was quite some distance.

  Once the four of them had entered the stairwell and started down, Carl began checking the air quality. For the first dozen levels, it held at about the same as it was in the area where they’d been.

  That changed once they reached a certain point, and the carbon dioxide began climbing fairly rapidly. The oxygen levels were also falling. Within a couple of levels, the air quality had become bad enough that Carl was glad they’d brought air with them.

  They stopped at that point, slid their masks into place, and turned on their air before continuing down.

  Once they reached the bottom of that first stairwell, they exited into the corridor. The lower ceilings made him nervous about the torches they had to use. Even those weren’t providing enough light as they flickered badly in the bad air.

  They were pretty deep at that point, and the air quality would have been lethal to an unprotected person. Even their medical nanites weren’t going to be enough to clean out someone’s blood at this point.

  They followed the directions given to them and were quickly at another stairwell leading downward. This one had a sign indicating the level that the fusion plant was on. It was almost twice as deep as they’d already come. Whoever had decided to build it down there had made certain that it was well protected.

  Every five minutes, they each checked the air remaining in their bottles, discarding any that were too low. Best not to take chances. It took them half an hour of slow moving to reach the designated level.

  The air there was so bad that the torches were almost dead. Carl pulled out one of the few battery-powered flashlights they had and turned it on.

  To his surprise, the stairwell continued down. There was stuff below this incredibly deep location. He’d had no idea of the complexity and scope of the underground support system that made it possible to live in such a large city.

  They ran into their first roadblock about five minutes later. It was a security door that had a keypad on it to keep unauthorized personnel out. It was dead, but they had an actual, physical key that Leader Mordechai had provided to bypass it.

  That was certainly something one didn’t see every day.

  Carl fitted the key into the lock. It stuck a little, but he finally got it to turn and heard a loud click as the lock opened. He pulled the door wide and looked into the dark corridor beyond. Once again, it looked like every other section down underneath the megacity: dark, somewhat dirty, and cold.

  A sign on the wall indicated that they needed to take a specific set of turns to get to the fusion plant. This level, even though it was very deep beneath the city, was enormous. Most of it seemed dedicated to the maintenance of the fusion plant and the distribution of power generated by it.

  He immediately noted that the support system wasn’t intact. A lot of panels were open, and it looked as if specific power conduits had been either removed or jury-rigged in some fashion. It was going to take a lot of work to get the fusion plant back to providing power to the city like Mordechai wanted.

  The next security door was going to be more difficult because it had been computer-controlled, but there was no power. It was built with a battery to support itself during a blackout, but that would’ve drained long ago.

  They were going to have to use a little brute force and ignorance, as Kelsey said, when they reached it. For that, Ju
lia would come in very handy, indeed. As would the axe that she’d recovered from a fire station they’d passed.

  Only when they reached the security door, it was wedged open. Leader Mordechai had been confident that it had been secured.

  Carl led the group through the door and deeper into the power generation center with a sense of growing dread. His premonition proved dead on when they reached the area housing the fusion plant itself.

  It was gone.

  “Isn’t there supposed to be a fusion plant here?” Julia asked, frowning.

  Carl played his light around the large room and began cursing. Since he’d worked closely with the marines for years, the range and scope of profanity had become quite extensive.

  When he finally ran out of nasty things to say, he headed for the cabinets along the periphery of the room that would typically contain the spare parts and tools needed to work on the fusion plant. As he began checking them, it quickly became evident that they were empty as well.

  “Someone stole it,” Carl eventually said. “Either that, or it was never here to begin with. Maybe Leader Mordechai got it wrong. Perhaps his ancestors moved the fusion plant to a lower level to protect it better, and that’s where they installed the shielding.”

  “I don’t think so,” Austin said from where he bent over the area the fusion plant had been removed from. “The amount of corrosion on these bolts isn’t all that great. Even with the low oxygen levels, I’d expect to see more rust and tarnish. These are almost bright. If I had to guess, the fusion plant was probably removed no more than a couple of years ago. Perhaps as little as six months.”

  He looked over at the rest of them and shook his head. “It seems to me that Leader Mordechai and Frankfort have been robbed. And without the fusion plant, I’m not sure how we’re going to get out of this city either. Even if they still let us go, how will we power a train?”