Bombardier - The Complete Trilogy

by SD Tanner

  “All ships land. Prepare to fight.”

  Critters surrounding their ships were dropping through the atmosphere with them. With the dim glow of a nearby sun, their bodies were black and shaped like spiders with many limbs. They would be hard to kill. Unable to resupply they had limited ammunition. The situation was bad.

  Her Weapons Specialist had clearly drawn the same conclusion. “This isn’t good.”

  “Show me another option.”

  His silence meant he didn’t have a better plan, and she clung to arms of her chair as the Scorpion plummeted to the ground. The terrain was rocky and flat, offering almost nowhere to hide. It was what they called these types of planets, dead rock. They had no life, no water and only a flat barren landscape. If they were lucky then they might find caves.

  “All troops find a bolt hole and secure it. BattleRigs are inflight home. Distress signal sent.” Sighing and wishing she could offer more, she added, “Help will be on its way. You just have to stay alive.”

  Her own ship slammed hard into the ground. If they were lucky then maybe the mass would become bored. It might recall the critters that were now clattering to the ground with them, but if it didn’t they would be trapped on the planet fighting a horde. As their many ships hammered into the ground, dust burst from the surface briefly hiding them from view. Seeming to float like spiders on a web, critters eased their landing by bouncing on their many legs. This planet had gravity and plenty of it.

  Dropping from the hatch on the Scorpion, she said, “All troops look for underground caves.”

  Through her helmet, she could hear the soldiers calling to one another, organizing themselves into squads. She could stay in the air, flying across the planet checking on her troops. If she thought it would help then she would have, but she had nothing to offer them. This was now a ground battle spread across the entire surface of the planet. Their only chance of survival was to find a place to hide.

  Soldiers around her were firing at hundreds of critters landing with them. Thirty Scorpions had formed a rough circle acting as a perimeter. Some were still firing weapons from their ships. Others were using the ships as cover while they fired at the critters. Black shapes were scuttling across the sandy ground both inside and out of their perimeter. One had the audacity to run at her. With twenty skinny rubbery legs, it raised the clawed ends of two of them ready to slash. It was at least five feet taller than she was, but she reached up a gloved hand, grabbing a limb. Yanking it down sharply, she stepped closer to the main body. Critters had round molded eyes and she hoped that was where they kept their brains. Punching hard with her other hand, she smashed the spot between its eyes.

  Seeming stunned by the blow, its legs flattened until its body was on the ground. Using its prone position to her advantage, she stomped hard on top of its head. She felt the head give, slamming her heel into the ground. Although she’d crushed whatever it used for a brain, it was still moving. The limbs were scrabbling against the dirt as it tried to rise. Angry in a way she did understand, she leaned over the body, tearing away legs until all that remained was a fat torso.

  Satisfied it could do nothing more, she scanned below the surface. Just as she’d hoped, there were small gaps under her feet. Ignoring the weapons fire around her, she jogged along the sandy ground looking for a bigger cave. Finally, there was a hollowness beneath her feet and it appeared to have only one entrance. Dropping to her knees, she clawed at the dirt until she’d created a hole. The cave looked about a hundred feet by fifty. Dry and filled with pillars of rocks and dirt, it was nothing more than a wide grave. Navigators would struggle to survive, but the Bombardiers might make it.

  Waving her hand, she shouted, “Over here!”

  Soldiers pulled away from their shabby perimeter, jogging backwards towards her while still firing. Grabbing the first as he arrived, she pushed him into the hole. “Check for other entrances. Secure them.”

  One-by-one, soldiers dropped into the hole in the ground. Unsure whether she would have communications underground, she kept her upper body out of the hole with her legs inside it. “All squads. Report in.”

  Voice began replying.

  “Twenty seven soldiers secured.”

  “Thirty eight soldiers secured.”

  Listening to each, she estimated that over five hundred of them were somewhere safe. Her troops were moving around the cave, calling to one another and moving rocks to secure entrances. Distracted by the reports she didn’t notice the critters crawling across the ground. It was only when she looked above ground that she saw them, but by then it was too late. Claws aimed at her neck were sweeping down.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  Happy Hunting

  (Ark Three)

  “Enemy contact. Large mass. Split into many critters. Abandoning rigs. Send help. Enemy contact. Large mass. Split into many critters. Abandoning rigs. Send help. Enemy contact. Large mass. Split into many crit…”

  Flicking off the speaker, the words ended abruptly, leaving the meeting room.in the ship building bay silent. “Where were they?”

  Tank sighed. “Sector Six-Bravo-One.”

  “What were they doing there?”

  “Embedding training.” Tank narrowed his eyes. “As per your orders.”

  Merging the Navigator and Bombardier armies was another idea that had looked easy on paper. In theory, they’d all started as Navigators, but Bombardiers had grown a lot since their training. Mostly independent, each was capable of making command decisions, whereas the Navigators lacked initiative. Compared to his Bombardiers, Navigators were immature and a bit mollycoddled. Tank agreed with him, so they’d sent the Battalions on missions hoping to form better teams. Commander One-Zero-One was one of Tank’s squad. Tough to the point of being detached, he couldn’t imagine what she’d been dealing with when she’d sent the distress signal.

  “There’s more.” Leaning forward, Tank flicked on the screen display.

  At first, he couldn’t understand what he was looking at. Other than Scorpions and three BattleRigs, the screen was black. It was only when something shot out of the darkness that he saw anything at all. Grabbing the visibility pod in a claw, it dragged it forward until the blackness grew into a pitted and cratered surface. The screen switched to another view, only now many thick limbs were shooting from the mass, grabbing at Scorpions with huge claws.

  “What the hell is that?”

  The screen froze and Tank turned to look at him. “That’s all we’ve got. It’s a new type of critter.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks pretty big and dense.”

  “What happened to the cute little spiders?”

  Tank snorted. “I don’t know and who’s to say this thing can’t produce them. You know how they like to transform.”

  Having seen critters break into smaller ones he knew all too well how they could change during a fight. “Do you think that’s what happened?”

  Sounding frustrated, Tank shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s what they did, but I’m betting One-oh-One didn’t send a distress signal over nothing.”

  When Tank suggested making Bombardier One-Zero-One a Battalion Commander, he’d spoken highly of their shared one hundred years of service. He hadn’t needed to be persuaded, just knowing Tank thought she was good had been enough for him. Commander Casey was recovering from the injection of nanobytes into her body. They were busy creating hybrid mechanical organs, healing her cancer as they did. While she was out of commission, he’d structured a new army led by Bombardiers. His choice of leaders had angered some of the Navigators, so he’d offered them the option of transforming. To his surprise, many of them had agreed. While he worked with Tank on Tracha, Navigators were transforming into Bombardiers on Earth.

  Staring at the frozen screen, Scorpions were caught midflight firing at the long and thick tendrils. Weapons fire had left the ships, but hadn’t yet hit the mass. The caught Scorpion was twisting at an awkward angle, clearl
y trying to free itself. He enlarged the screen, studying the spots around the BattleRig. The dots became men and women abandoning the large craft in HackSuits.

  “She sent them out in HackSuits. Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I guess it means she thought the ships were lost.”

  “They weren’t all lost. We’re getting a pulse signal from one of them.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Sector Charlie-Nine-Three.”

  “Where’s it headed?”

  “Here.”

  Commander One-Zero-One had sent her rig home. It wasn’t a good sign. She must have been desperate. “Is anyone aboard?”

  “If there is then they’re not talking, so I’m guessing not.”

  Only the lead BattleRig had survived. If soldiers went out in HackSuits then every Scorpion must have headed into space. Their only hope was they’d managed to hole up somewhere far away from the critters.

  “Order the rig to stop and hold position.”

  “Why?”

  “You need to find the lost Battalion. Use the wormhole to transport a search crew to them.”

  Tank gave him a puzzled look. “I’m more than happy to do that, but why me?”

  Ever since he’d taken over the army, everything was happening too slowly. It might only have been three months, but they were already too late. The big bug in space proved the critters were on their way and they’d learned a thing or two since he’d last seen them. They needed to prepare faster than they were. Dunk Three had transported a wormhole to Tracha, giving them fast access to Earth. The technology hadn’t been perfected, so they couldn’t move anything with significant biological material. Whenever they tried to transport fragile living tissue, all they got at the other end was a pile of warm mush. It meant Navigators were still transported by ship. Dunk Three assured him he was on the verge of a breakthrough, but since killing his clone his brother hadn’t been too reliable.

  At least they could transport BattleDroids, Scorpions and Bombardiers through the wormhole. On Earth, Granger was running the planet, devoting as many of the engineers as he could to building a larger wormhole they could use to move BattleRigs. Dunk Three was testing variations of the wormhole to transport living tissue, but everything was taking too long.

  “We need to move faster than this.” Leaning closer to Tank, he added, “Believe me, I want to find our lost Battalion as much as you do, but I need to find out where the critters are coming from.”

  “Can you do that?”

  Having access to a wormhole changed everything. In a matter of seconds, he could move a small squad of Scorpions half way across the universe. The critters had to come from somewhere. He could either fight them in space or destroy them at source. When they’d tallied the damage done during the civil war between Earth and the Bombardiers, over a hundred thousand men and women had died. He’d lost one hundred and ninety Battleships along with three thousand of their fighters. He was down by thirty percent of the army he should have had. There was a good chance they’d never had enough firepower to beat the critters and now they had even less.

  “I don’t know, Tank, but if we’re going win this war then we need to get smarter.” He flicked his head at the frozen screen. “If anything, this just proves what I’ve suspected all along. We don’t have the firepower.”

  “I hear that. Take your squad and look for the critter nest. I’ll find the lost Battalion.” Standing, he turned to leave the meeting room, but Tank caught him by the arm. “Just one thing…”

  Surprised by the softening in his tone of voice, he turned to face him. “What?”

  “It’s about Leon.”

  Tank had named his new son after a man he’d always spoken highly about. Leon had been one of the first Navigators two hundred years earlier, later transforming into a Bombardier. He’d died during a test mission of the first BattleRig ever built on Tracha. It seemed, with the reappearance of the critters, Tank was reminiscing more and more. Mostly distanced and detached, lately Tank was talking about the people he’d lost. Although he sympathized with him, he wished Tank understood just how much he was needed now. No matter how he felt about the past, he needed to let it go.

  “I want you to be his Godfather.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means if anything happens to Casey and me then you’ll raise him as your son.”

  Chuckling, he batted Tank’s shoulder. “Aren’t you the guy that never dies?”

  “I know, but will you do it?”

  “Of course I will. No question about it.”

  Tank gave a relieved nod. “Just one other thing…”

  Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “Do you have more kids I don’t know about?”

  Chuckling, Tank shook his head. “I don’t think so, but I was just gonna add that Tiana would make a great mother.”

  “Matchmaking, Tank?” Turning away, he called over his shoulder, “You’re getting soft in your old age, old man.”

  Although he’d flipped Tank off, he knew he had a point. He and Tiana had something good going on, something that deserved to be recognized. Would she marry him? Maybe. Probably. Smiling to himself, he went in search of his squad. Cardiff, Lace, Mex, Samson and three BattleDroids were joining him on his bug hunt. Tiana had worked with engineers in CaliTech, adding nanobyte intelligence to the droids. If it got too hot for five Bombardiers and three smart droids, they could always escape home through the wormhole.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  Through the Looking Glass

  (Ark Three)

  “What do you think?”

  Cardiff was standing in the middle of a small holographic universe comprised of planets he’d never seen before.

  Having no idea where to start, the Trachan and CaliTech engineers had chosen coordinates in other galaxies based on speed and distance. Dunk had copied the propulsion technology used by the original spaceships that arrived on Earth two hundred years earlier. If that was how their enemy traveled then it was safe to assume they were at least twenty-five million light-years away. After that, it was only a question of sending visibility pods through wormholes to survey regions. This was one of the few showing any sign of activity. Although it was months of painstaking work it was still nothing more than an educated wild guess.

  Walking through the image, he stood next to her. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Visibility pods weren’t smart technology. All they’d done was program them to travel a circuit through the region, filming as they went. The engineers had pieced the footage together, giving them a rough map of the planets. Some of the pods never made it back and without any footage, they didn’t know what had happened to them. Others had returned scarred and burned. Whatever existed in this galaxy, it didn’t appear to be friendly.

  Glancing at Tiana, he asked, “What do you think destroyed the other pods?”

  Walking through the image, she stopped in the middle of a cluster of planets. “I do not know. Some of the footage has been damaged.”

  Their mission was a dangerous one. They were going somewhere no human or Bombardier had ever been before. Where originally he’d vaguely hoped to find the source of the critters, losing a Battalion made him even more determined to find them. Their enemy had stepped up their attacks, arriving in even larger formations that before. Perhaps they really did have to travel twenty-five million light years to reach them. If that was true then he was looking in the right place.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go to the most dangerous region first,” Cardiff said.

  Walking through the image, he approached the seven visibility pods lined up against the wall of the loading bay on Tracha. They’d sent twelve pods to this region and only these had returned. Four of them showed deep scarring. Their once round bodies bore deep scratches across the surface and some of the cameras were broken.

  “Something attacked them,” Tiana said, appearing by his side.

  “Why weren’t the
y destroyed?”

  Crouching next to one of the pods, she gently ran her hand across its surface. “Maybe because it did not defend itself.”

  Visibility pods had engines and thrusters like a ship, but no weapons. Their sole purpose was to extend the range of their vision, meaning they weren’t designed to attack anything. Being nothing more than a ball rolling through space they were only a tool.

  Holding out his hand to Tiana, he helped her stand. “We need to go where the action is.” Flicking his head at the damaged pods, he turned to Cardiff. “This region did the most damage to our pods so that’s where we’re going.”

  “But it doesn’t look much different to our own galaxy.”

  She was still standing amongst the holographic planets, appearing like a monster in space. The image had been shrunk so that hundreds of planets were within a fifty square foot area. Suspended in the air and completely still the planets look as dead as those in their own galaxy. Although they might look inactive, the pods behind him proved something somewhere was very much alive. Whatever it was, it had been smart enough to attack the pods and then to stop when they didn’t defend themselves. That implied intelligence. If it had been a dumb space bug then none of the pods would have returned.

  Shaking his head, he held onto Tiana’s hand, leading her back to the suspended planets. “It might look the same, but something behaved aggressively enough to attack the pods, and smart enough to know to stop when they didn’t fight back.”

  “What does that mean?” Cardiff asked.

  Reaching out her free hand, Tiana placed it under one of the holographic planets. Tilting her head as she studied it, she gave a small smile. “Our enemy is on one of these planets. Maybe even this one.”

  The critter attack on Tracha had changed their peaceful attitude. Although they weren’t willing to kill one another, the Trachans didn’t accept dying at the hands of another species. As Lead Engineer, Tiana’s father was working hard to integrate Earth and Trachan technology. Where Trachans had once been a dying species, CaliTech engineers were showing them how to reproduce based on cloning. Their combined efforts were bringing about a step change in their capabilities.