An Italian voice came over the comm. “Gameboy acknowledges, Coondog,” Gamber said. “Basket, Needles, Viagra, just like Alpha. Basket left, Needles right. Viagra and I will cover, then follow on your mark.”
“Roger. Basket moving,” said Basci, followed immediately by Lee “Needles” Thompson’s acknowledgement. After a few minutes he continued. “In position. Dark, no movement. There are some fixtures and objects hanging from the overhead in here, but nothing appears to be obstructing.”
“Got it, Basket. Viagra, move up past Needles. Coming past you Basket.”
While waiting for the entry team to get into position, Jackson addressed the CASPers. “Canny, Kaiju, we’re going to do a ‘John Woo.’ Twin and Footlong, that means back to back, weapons facing out along the threat axis. I want one of each team facing the entrance, the other one hundred eighty degrees away.” Once he received acknowledgement from Kuhn and Kaishwo in their Mk 7s and Alex Venafre and Tony Alongi in the Mk 8s, he turned back to the entry team.
“Alpha, Bravo. What do you have?”
“Alpha reports all negative. No contact, no movement.”
“Bravo has no movement, but there are some obstructions in here. NODs are unrevealing. Requesting permission to go to weapons lights.”
“Granted, Bravo.”
“Roger. Bravo team activate weapons lights.”
“Augh!”
“Alto! Stop, turn them off!”
“Get that fucking light out of my eyes.”
“Hardman, the gallery has not, repeat not been stripped. There’s crystal everywhere, floor, ceiling, walls. It’s all reflecting back and we can’t see a damned thing!”
“Contact! I have movement!”
“Get him off! Get him off me!”
Ray could see the display light up with red dots, surrounding and outnumbering the entry team, more importantly, there were now red symbols outside the cave!
“Movement! CASPer team Delta has movement from the forest.”
“CASPer Echo has movement from the garden. They seem to be wearing some sort of metallic armor.”
“That’s the plate mail from the armor museum,” supplied Katie over the comm link. “Now we know it was them instead of townspeople.”
“I think these are townspeople!” said “Twin” Venafre.
“No way! This guy’s drooling blood. They are acting like the berserkers we’ve heard about; some of them are even fighting each other.” Kaiju observed.
“Weapons free! All teams, weapons free.” Jackson overrode the overlapping comms.
“Engaging.”
“Roger.”
“Tally-ho!”
“Meno male!”
There was the telltale sizzle of laser rifle fire from the lightly armored entry team, while the CASPers emitted the characteristic zing of MACs firing. Pole and Uzi looked back and forth between the two CASPer teams, wondering if they should engage either group of attackers. Lucky looked over and advised, “Hold for now. If either of them gets overrun, we’ll need you then.”
There were a lot of red dots on the screen and more attackers coming from the garden and forest. Ray pulled up a feed from the drones covering the local area. The Italians had brought a half-dozen of the quad-rotor surveillance ’bots, and WO Andalusia controlled them from the command vehicle about half a klick away in the old parking lot. He knew Jackson was monitoring the feeds and was experienced enough with pinplants to multitask, but it would not hurt to have another set of pins monitoring the feeds.
“There! There are cave entrances in the forest and garden. Can we close those?” Ray asked.
“We can,” announced Pole. “Footlong, pull coordinates from Mama and let’s swing this baby around.” A three second burst in each direction, resulted in clouds of dust at each of the two cave entrances. The drones had automatically retreated from the MAC firing, and now closed in, showing that the tunnels were now collapsed.
“Okay, that should keep them off of our flank,” Jackson said. “Delta and Echo, finish off the stragglers and reorient. We may need Echo to go inside.”
The interior battle had momentarily slipped Ray’s attention, and when he checked the display again, he saw more than thirty red icons, but only four blue ones. There were two yellow, and two alternating red and black. As he watched, another blue had turned yellow, and one of the yellows was now red.
“Oh my God! Tank! We have a tank!” yelled Mama over the comm. “One, two, three…four tanks!”
“Tanks? What kind of tanks?” Jackson asked.
“Old ones. Wheeled tracks, gray, heavy metal, great, big honking gun tube on a turret. The gun is longer than the vehicle. They have a black cross outlined in white on the side.”
“The gun tube—smooth? Or does it look like several different diameters telescoping?”
“Telescoping.”
“Tigers, then,” said Jackson. “World War Two German Tigers. Bad news if they are still functional.”
“Functional? Fuck, one of them is firing!”
“Incoming!”
The concussion hit almost as soon as the sound and then Canny and Kaiju’s CASPers disappeared in a cloud of dirt and smoke.
“Inside! Get inside, we can’t stay out here!” yelled Jackson. “Mama! Can you dead-man the drones?
“I can try. There’s no guarantee it will do any good. You’ve got incoming.”
The second shot missed the Italian CASPers, but they were staggered and a flying rock hit Ray’s tank. They needed to move now to get inside the museum entrance. Ray would have to exit his leaking water tank anyway, its small treads were simply not fast enough.
Meanwhile Mama dropped the drones over each tank and detonated the small C8 charges each carried for just such an emergency. Four simultaneous concussions heaved the ground, but Ray could not take the time to check if the dead-man bombs had been effective as he pulled himself across the ground.
He felt an arm reach down and scoop him up to carry him. He looked down at the furred arm, then up at Lucky, who grinned. “Too slow, Blubberface.”
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Four
Inside was not much better than outside. Now that they had light in the museum, they could see that many of the colored crystal displays were still present, although not necessarily intact. Some of that was due to the current battle, but some was clearly prior vandalism, such as the pyramid of crystals that appeared to be cemented together using a dark brown substance. Ray did not want to think about the origin of that substance given the additional evidence someone had been living here. There was bedding, food wrappers, and the stench of waste and decay.
The entrance lobby was damaged, but not involved in the current conflict. Screams and laser pulses were coming from the inner gallery just beyond. A laser beam came through the opening to the gallery, visible because of the increased dust from the exterior explosions and disturbed litter inside. Lucky grunted and loosened her grip on Ray. The cephalopod reached up two arms and hoisted himself onto the Besquith’s back like a pack. With two arms over Lucky’s shoulders, crossed in the front, it freed her hands to grasp her laser rifle in one hand and a throwing knife in the other.
While some Besquith would have gone into battle with Humans equipped mainly with their own sharpened and metal-clad claws, what the Enforcer had learned about these berserkers suggested slashing and stabbing would not be enough to stop them. It was best not to let them close, hence the distance weapons. Ray reached for the nanite injector and probed the spot in his mount’s pink camouflage armor where the laser had burned through it. The chemoreceptors lining his arm tasted blood, so he sprayed the nanites on the wound and turned his attention back to the melee.
He looked up to see a biped covered in plates of shiny metal approaching, menacing them with a two-meter long pole, half of it metallic, with a barbed tip. Upon learning of the theft from the armor museum, Ray had downloaded information on ancient weapons into his pinplants, and quickly identified the wea
pon as a pilum, a two-thousand-year-old spear. There was blood on the barbed tip, so it was clearly functional. A laser struck the polished plate armor and reflected in their direction. It glanced just past their heads. He could hear Lucky hiss and felt searing pain along his mantle, but the advancing berserker suddenly sprouted a knife handle through one vision slit of its helmet.
That’s my girl.
“No lasers! There’s too much reflection!”
Their quarry seemed to be running out of berserkers, but there were still enemy outside. Mama’s suicidal drones had only managed to disable three of the tanks. The fourth had killed the MAC gunners, Pole and Uzi, and severely damaged Twin’s CASPer before she finally took it out with her own, smaller MAC. The blue force tracker was showing the CASPer as having severe mechanical and organic damage.
The final CASPer was stationed just outside the entrance to the gallery. Footlong faced the lobby to interdict any remaining forces coming from outside. A dark shadow detached itself from the ceiling and dropped down on the back of the mecha. A sizzling sound came from that direction, and Ray’s skin tingled with the feel of extremely high frequency vibration.
Fiilaash!
Ray tugged on Lucky’s shoulder to get her to turn and fire on the Wrogul clinging to Footlong’s CASPer, but it was too late. The rear armor split open, and the Wrogul continued down the back toward the jump jets and power unit. It ruptured one of the jump juice tanks, and the resultant spray was ignited by sparks from the damaged electronics. A spray of flame lashed out in their direction, and Ray wrapped his mantle over Lucky’s unprotected face and reached up with four arms to find the overhead beams that Mengele had used to hide and drop onto Footlong. He managed to lift Lucky out of the fire, but not entirely, and his chemoreceptors detected singed fur from her unprotected legs.
He was hanging from the ceiling, supporting Lucky’s weight, when the capacitors in the CASPer discharged, sending shrapnel all through the room. One piece nearly bisected one of his supporting arms near the mantle, while another neatly sliced the tip off another arm. The thin strip of tissue connecting the almost amputated limb stretched and tore, causing excruciating pain. That in turn caused Ray to lose his grip on the beam.
He and Lucky fell to the floor, and he lost consciousness.
* * *
He awoke to a sensation of water. He was not immersed, as if in his travel or sleeping tank, but more like a bucket of water had been thrown on him. He was on a flat metal surface and there was water puddled on it. He shifted the best he could despite the pain. His skin itched, and he knew that he had been out of water for a long time before the recent drenching. As he shifted, he could see Lucky on a neighboring table, with a very old, very ugly Wrogul hovering over it.
“Did you know the Besquith consider themselves traders more so than mercenaries?” The strange Wrogul spoke through a translator held in one scarred and bent arm. “Such a shame. They are such excellent fighters, but they think too much. Much like your Humans.” It turned to look at him, and Ray was struck by the malignant yellow tint to its eyes, and irregularly shaped pupil. Unlike his own rectangular pupil, the other being had an almost W shape to his iris.
“You are Mengele, I presume.”
“Why, yes, I have become rather fond of that name. Another Human gave it to me, and I had to seek out its meaning. As you can see, I have even sought out one of the refuges his people left behind.” Mengele waved an arm and indicated the room.
It was old. From pictures Ray had downloaded with the info on the armor museum, he could tell that room and furnishings dated from early twentieth century, as the bipedals measured it.
Bipedals. How interesting that my thoughts should go in that direction. Here I am facing one of my own kind, an actual Wrogul as the Galactics know them, and my mind resorts to thinking of myself as Human.
“You are an abomination, you know. Your progenitor was never meant to survive. When I sent him on his mission, he was to collect his data and then die like a good little drone.”
“And exactly what was that mission?” Ray could not believe the Wrogul was monologuing. It was the perfect cliché of every bad police, spy, or space opera stereotype!
“Why, to find a way to enslave or destroy the Humans. They, too, are an abomination. Like your Besquith, here, they think too much. They ask too many questions. Fortunately, I found a way to fix the first, and it sort of naturally takes care of the second.”
Ray said nothing. If he appeared too curious, Mengele might stop talking. On the other hand, he was beginning to feel a strange sensation in his head. It was as if something was trying to divert his attention.
“What? You are not curious about these berserkers of mine? It is quite simple. If they have pinplants, I just overstimulate the limbic system. For those without pinplants, a tailored nanovirus does the same thing. The general will be pleased. It makes Humans so much more…agreeable.”
“Peepo.”
Mengele’s translator gave a hiss-crackle of laughter, and for the first time, Ray recognized one of the chromophore light patterns as being one of amusement. “Oh, no. These pitiful Veetanho are amateurs. My class gives them orders. We do not take orders from under-evolved races.”
“Mengele, you are under arrest. By the authority of the Peacemaker Guild you are guilty of slavery and willful genocide against a Union member race.”
“Silence! You have no authority over me, child! Have you not heard? Humans are not members of the Union. Peepo saw to that.” To emphasize its words, it plunged one of its tentacles into Lucky’s abdomen and withdrew it, covered in blood. Her body spasmed on the table and Ray felt his heart sink.
“No, not the…not the Humans.” Ray was having difficulty thinking clearly. Mengele’s treatment of Lucky began to fill him with rage.
“Oh no?” Mengele asked, and there was an overtone of sarcasm to his words.
“Me!” shouted Ray, and he gasped at the effort. “I am Wrogul! I am a full member of the Union.” He had to pause before continuing, to muster the effort to speak against the pressure—the voices in his head. “You. Try. To. Enslave. Me! But I know your weakness!”
“Fool! I will destroy you all! I have no weakness, and I will destroy the Humans—after I turn them into the perfect weapon. They will be animals, and your colony? You will be a curiosity. Perhaps I shall keep one of you as a pet!” Mengele reached up and grasped a bar placed across the room. It quickly crossed over to Ray’s table and dropped down on top of him.
Ray could barely move. The pressure in his head, the pain, the lethargy from being out of water for so long. The pressure! It had to be an attack on his pinplants!
Mengele reached up and placed its sensory tentacles alongside Ray’s body. He could feel the fiilaash begin, the tentacles probing into one eye, the other deep into his brain.
For just a moment, Ray thought back to the corridor of Jefferson, the dead Goka surrounding him and Verne. “Noooooooo!” Ray screamed, and it seemed to release him from the mental pressure and paralysis. He reached his own tentacles up and plunged them deep into Mengele’s mantle, but rather than reaching for neural tissue, he reached for the Wrogul’s own pinplants. He identified the transmitter locus it was using to force the mental attack, disabled it, and sent a counter signal from his own stored memories.
“Let me re-introduce you to my brother Human, Ginzberg.” Ray said as Mengele screamed. “It is a small world, after all.”
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Holy hell!” Mama said at her first glimpse of the cavern. “What the fuck is all of this stuff?”
“Ancient war machines,” said Harryhausen from where he was being bandaged by Lucky. One arm was completely gone, all the way up to the mantle, while another was missing the last five centimeters. Nanite-induced tissue regeneration could probably restore the shortened arm, but the amputated one was gone for good. Blue blood still seeped from where it had been cauterized, as well as several other locations.
One eye was swollen completely shut, and he was uncertain whether it would return to normal vision.
For all that, he got off better than Lucky. She was definitely going to lose an eye, and a couple of the burns were likely to make her coat patchy and discolored. The fiilaash damage to her abdomen was certain to increase the risks of the rather traumatic puberty she would endure if she still wanted to be an alpha. From what he knew of his friend and partner, she would risk it anyway.
The battle had cost them severely. The Italian squad was simply…gone. Kaiju would never get the chance to be first sergeant, and Jackson himself might be headed for medical retirement. On the other hand, the news from Wiesbaden suggested he, Coonradt, and Ginzberg were all that was left of Polonius’ Rächer. Surprisingly, Sergeant Derrick Coonradt had come through completely unscathed. When his handheld laser was deflected by the berserkers’ polished armor, the beam bounced everywhere except at him. Unfortunately, for his peace of mind, one of those bounces had hit Lucky. Jackson was keeping his NCO as far away from the Enforcer as possible.
WO Andalusia had watched the battle from the command truck. She was essential to management of the field, operating the drones and providing overwatch. However, once all of the drones had been detonated, she had approached the museum entrance and had helped take down the last of the berserkers. She had a few laser hits of her own, but nothing major. She was still outside when Footlong’s CASPer detonated, so she missed seeing Mengele remove Ray and Lucky from the gallery. It had only been when Ray dragged himself through a hidden door that she even knew he was still alive.
While Lucky and Jackson were being treated, Ray accessed the memories he had downloaded directly from Mengele before the Wrogul had died. The museum had been built with absolutely no indication of what lay hidden deeper in the mountain. Ray had summoned the others inside once they found the cavern.
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