Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  Adeyemi moved toward what looked to be the door, though Nick couldn’t be sure given how grainy the footage coming through at the moment was. Then the other feeds showed him look back at his team and signal to them with his free hand—no one would utter a sound from that moment on. He pointed first at the door and then at his weapon, and then raised his hand and made a door opening motion. The other Marines all nodded their understanding and raised their weapons toward the door to cover whatever might be awaiting them on the other side.

  Adeyemi pushed the door open, and by the time he’d raised his weapon and stepped out, the footage coming through his camera had sharpened and cleared significantly, indicating that there was at least a little bit of ambient light out there. He aimed first in one direction down the length of what appeared to be a fairly long and wide hallway, and then whirled around and aimed in the other direction, where the hallway appeared to be just as long and wide. Apparently, it ran the entire length of the building, and Nick had seen that a number of doors lined both sides in both directions. He adjusted his position on his stool, trying to get a little more comfortable. This operation was going to take some time.

  Adeyemi signaled for his team to join him. They worked their way down one side of the hall to the end and then back up the other side, and then crisscrossed from one side to the other and back again as they advanced in the other direction, one room at a time, one room right after another without delay. They approached each room with equal caution—Adeyemi, Engel, Axton, and Smith—always in that order and always keeping watch in all directions. Two covered the door while the other two watched the hall. One pulled the door open and then all four poured into the room en masse, moved back-to-back, and then spread out and covered the entire room as they cleared it. Most of the rooms appeared to have once been offices or workrooms and were empty except for a few items of long-abandoned furniture or what looked like broken down equipment of some sort or another. The Marines had cleared bathrooms at both ends of the hall as well, but perhaps one room in every four or five had been much larger, about the size of classrooms, and the large number of broken tables and scattered chairs strewn across their floors had seemed to indicate that was exactly what they had been. Classrooms. Perhaps the building had once served as a military training facility of some kind.

  By the time they finished clearing the top floor, Nick had lost all track of time. He had no idea how long it had taken them. Nor did he really care. What was important was the fact that they hadn’t encountered any hostile forces since taking out the gunners on the roof—more than a little curious, that—and gotten themselves killed or wounded. That was what mattered most.

  Stairs. Rather, more stairs. They’d found a stairwell when they were down at the other end of the building and had just found another one at this end. That was not good, Nick realized, recalling those days many years ago when he’d led whole infantry companies into hostile towns to clear buildings of enemy troops. It meant that while they worked their way down to the lower floors on one end, hostile forces could move freely between floors on the other end and possibly close in on them from above and below at the same time. The team could split up, of course, one Marine covering each stairwell while the other two continued clearing the rooms, but then their ability to keep eyes on all directions and cover one another while they moved would be seriously curtailed. Whether or not to do that was Adeyemi’s call to make—one of those tactical decisions that Nick believed should always be made by the commander in the field.

  He looked over at Irby’s feed. The sniper had found himself an excellent vantage point up in the trees from where he had a good view of the building and nearly the entire tree line to either side, and probably that directly below him as well. Nick wondered how close to the edge of the clearing he’d risked going and hoped that he’d stayed at least a little ways back behind the tree line, but then he set those thoughts aside. Squad Sergeant Irby was an experienced sniper who knew exactly what he was doing. If he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have been part of the team.

  Adeyemi led the way as he and his team started creeping slowly down the stairs toward the second floor. The sergeant major had chosen not to split up his team. Nick suspected that he would have made the same choice himself, given the same circumstances. A quick glance across all four feeds confirmed they were continuing to watch in all directions. Adeyemi was looking directly ahead at the landing while Engle leaned slightly over the railing to their left and covered whatever he could see of the area below. Axton was keeping watch behind them, as was Smith, who was keeping his weapon trained directly on the door.

  Adeyemi stepped onto the landing halfway down to the second floor, and as he followed the curving railing around the 180 degree turn to the left, Nick barely caught a glimpse of the surprised man who’d apparently been standing guard beside the door below before the sergeant major shot him once through the base of his throat—another wine bottle cork popping.

  Heather jumped with a start and allowed a sharp yelp to escape before she slapped a hand over her mouth and met Nick’s gaze, but Nick resisted the urge to ask her if she was all right, knowing exactly how she would respond if he did. At least everything appeared on their screens in shades of green rather than in full color. Otherwise she might have lost her dinner by now.

  The guard grabbed his gushing throat with both hands, glared up at the man who’d killed him as he fell back against the wall—his wide eyes appeared to glow an almost yellow-green on Nick’s screen—then slid away from the door and collapsed to the floor, probably already dead. The team kept watch while Adeyemi approached him, knelt beside him, checked the side of his neck for a pulse, and then took a moment to disable his rifle. At least, that was what it appeared he was doing. That done, he stood up by the door, looked at each member of his team in turn—Engel was covering the door while Axton and Smith covered the stairs both up and down—and then reached for the handle.

  He pulled the door open and barely a second passed before Engel fired twice at an armed man almost before Nick saw him. Heather jumped again as that man grunted and collapsed, but managed not to gasp or yelp this time. Then all four Marines moved quickly into the second floor hallway—what Nick could see of it looked identical to the one they’d just cleared up on the third floor—and Smith closed the door behind them. Adeyemi paused and knelt beside the enemy as before, and this time Nick saw that he was, in fact, disabling the man’s weapon, burning out its power cell with some kind of small handheld instrument. Then he led the way again as he and his team moved from room to room, crisscrossing back and forth across the hall from one room to the next the whole way this time, clearing each one in the same manner as those they had cleared upstairs. They found more offices and workrooms and classrooms as well as the expected pair of bathrooms at each end of the hall, but encountered no personnel beyond the two they had already neutralized.

  The calm before the storm, Nick feared.

  A quick glance at Irby’s feed revealed that he was still standing quietly by at his position in the trees, waiting to cover his teammates’ eventual withdrawal from the building.

  Having finally cleared the second floor, those teammates positioned themselves two on each side of the door to the stairwell, Adeyemi and Engle facing the door while Axton and Smith turned their backs and stood facing back up the hall, covering their rear. This time Engel grabbed the door handle while Adeyemi raised his weapon to cover, as the door was going to open in the opposite direction.

  Engel pulled the door and Adeyemi charged forward almost before he’d opened it enough for him to fit through, swinging his weapon up and out at the dark figure ahead of him, knocking the muzzle of the rifle being brought to bear on his head upward. The enemy fired into the wall above before he could react to the sergeant major’s assault—fully automatic without a silencer, so everyone in and around the building had to have heard it. Adeyemi then swung the butt of his weapon around and struck the enemy hard in his temple, stepped into him, and
shoved him out over the stairs. The enemy tumbled down the stairs and hit the landing with a thud, and Adeyemi shot him twice before he could even try to get up again.

  “So much for the quiet approach,” Johnson commented.

  What sounded to Nick like the squealing protest of old metal hinges and the loud crash of a heavy door slamming hard against a wall came through both Adeyemi’s and Engel’s feeds, as did the sound of someone barking orders in the language of the Sulaini that came afterward. Adeyemi and Engel each pulled a grenade from their pouches and pressed the buttons to activate them as the rumble of several personnel running up the stairs followed. As soon as their small yellow indicator lights began to flash, Engel pitched his grenade over the railing where it would presumably drop to the first floor, while Adeyemi lobbed his down the stairs to the landing. Then they hurried back through the stairwell door, back into the hallway to escape the blasts, Adeyemi pulling the door closed behind them.

  Barely a second later the nearly simultaneous detonations shook the door and peppered it with shrapnel, their thunder badly distorted through the audio feeds, pegging the level indicators, yet still not loud enough to drown out the penetrating but mercifully brief bloodcurdling screams of those who’d been caught between them.

  “It’s on now,” Johnson commented afterward.

  Nick glanced over at him, and then at Heather. She wore an expression of both pity and fear, but still showed no sign of looking away.

  Adeyemi threw open the door once more and the team poured into the swirling cloud of dust that filled stairwell. As they moved into place and hurried down the stairs, Adeyemi’s feed showed two more bloodied bodies lying on the landing alongside the man he’d pushed and then shot. But they were only the beginning. As they rounded the bend to descend to the first floor, they found themselves having to step over the bloody remains of more than half a dozen more dead men. The stairs literally ran with their blood as faces had been destroyed, throats and torsos had been punctured or sliced open, and arms and legs had been mangled and severed.

  “Oh my God,” Heather mumbled. Nicked gazed over at her. She’d leaned back on her stool and actually looked away this time, even closed her eyes. But he didn’t say anything. She looked as though she might only be seconds away from puking up her last meal, but he decided that if she was going to insist on watching the live feeds, then she was going to have to deal with whatever she saw.

  At the bottom of the stairs Adeyemi reached down and dragged one of the bodies from in front of the door with his free hand—it didn’t have any legs, Nick noticed—while he held his weapon trained on the door with the other. Engel waited for his nod, then grabbed the handle and stepped back as he threw the door open and raised his weapon, aiming into yet another long hallway. Doors lined both sides of this hallway just as they had the previous two, but unlike those on the floors above, these doors were all open.

  A single shot rang out and Engel grunted and fell back. Axton grabbed hold of him and dragged him back into the stairwell while Adeyemi returned fire briefly to cover her and then slammed the door closed again. Then all four of the Marines quickly backed off as a cacophony of automatic weapons fire perforated the door as though it were made of aluminum foil.

  “Armor-piercing,” Axton commented.

  “You all right, Doc?” Smith asked.

  “Yeah,” Engel answered, sounding like he was in some pain. “Hit me in the body armor.”

  Smith’s feed showed Engel starting to sit up. “Lucky they didn’t shoot you with the same thing they used on the door,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Engel agreed as he stared wide-eyed at what remained of the heavy door, which now bore a striking resemblance to a slice of Swiss cheese. “No shit.”

  “Hey, it’s getting loud in there,” Irby said quietly over the comm. “You guys all right?”

  “Good to go, Eagle Eye,” Smith answered. “We’re just not getting along very well with the residents. You watch yourself out there.”

  “Grenades,” Adeyemi directed. “Now, before half their force comes down on us from up there,” he then added, pointing back up the stairs they’d descended.

  He pulled one of his own and then reached up to the door handle with his free hand while the others each pulled two of theirs. He pointed to himself first and said, “Danger close,” and then pointed at each of his Marines in turn and added, “Short, medium, long.” They nodded and raised their grenades, but Engel had a question.

  “Sergeant Major, wait. What if our objective is in there with them?”

  “If she’s in the hall with them, she’s a collaborator,” Adeyemi replied, catching Nick off guard with his rather facetious comment. Then, with a nod to his team, he pressed the button to activate his grenade and threw the door open once more.

  He tossed his grenade no more than ten feet into the hallway. Then, one after another, the other Marines quickly tossed theirs in to more or less steadily increasing distances. Then they all quickly backed away from the door and clamped their hands over their ears.

  The first grenade exploded, spraying deadly shrapnel into the stairwell past the Marines and filling it with a billowing cloud of dust as six more blasts followed in rapid succession. The heavily distorted rumble pegged the audio level indicators again, and before the dust had even begun to settle Adeyemi was leading his team forward into the hallway.

  Nick looked over all four of their feeds but couldn’t see anything through the dust, and he wondered if the Marines were as blind to what lay ahead of them as he was.

  Gunfire erupted—flickering flashes of raucous light through the thick dust like lightning inside heavy, dark storm clouds. The Marines split left and right, going low against both walls, and returned fire, rotating their muzzles in tight circles to fill the hallway ahead of them with a wall of death for five long seconds before Adeyemi finally ordered them to cease fire.

  The dust settled and the smoke began to clear. Bodies spattered in blood littered the floor ahead of them. As far as Nick could tell they were all dead, but Adeyemi and his people would determine that as they approached each one in turn.

  They rose to their feet and started moving again, very slowly, stopping first to verify that all of the enemy fighters were dead, and then clearing each room one at a time, just as they had on the floors above, except that this time only two of them entered while the other two remained in the hall to cover them. A shot or two rang out from time to time as they slowly worked their way toward the far end of the hall, the number of enemy dead increasing by one each time, but the Marines came through unscathed.

  “I’ve got a locked door here,” Smith reported.

  Adeyemi turned toward Smith, and then Nick looked at Smith’s feed for a better look. Except for being a little narrower, his locked door looked like all the others, but the locking mechanism itself was obviously a recent addition.

  “Can you pick it?” Adeyemi asked him. Then, apparently seeing that mechanism for what it was as Smith looked back at him, he amended his question. “Can you defeat it?”

  “I’ve never even seen a mechanism like this before, Sergeant Major,” Smith answered.

  “Max, see what you can do.”

  Smith took Axton’s place watching the hall while she stepped up to the narrower door to take a closer look. “Pretty standard metals,” she observed. “I can blow this no problem, Top.”

  “Do it,” Adeyemi ordered.

  “Wait a second, Sergeant Major,” Engel objected, “if our objective is in there, blowing the door off might kill her.”

  “What about that, Max?” Adeyemi inquired.

  “I’m not going to blow the door off,” Axton explained. “I’m only going to burn the lock. It’ll be more like a fizzle than a blast.”

  “Good enough for me, Max,” Adeyemi told her. “Get on it.”

  Axton knelt in front of the door and Nick watched her feed while she worked. He didn’t really know what she was doing—explosives ordinance had never bee
n his specialty—but that didn’t matter... as long as she knew what she was doing, which he felt sure she did. She worked quickly and finished in only a few moments, then stood up, leaned close to the door, and spoke through it, warning, “If you’re in there and you can hear me, stay back from the door.” Then she faced around to Adeyemi and reported, “Ready, Sergeant Major.”

  “Do it,” he directed.

  She depressed the single small button on the device she’d attached to the mechanism and then stood up and stepped back when it started flashing. A few seconds later bright sparks started flying like miniature fireworks and smoke started rising toward the ceiling. The sound that came through her audio feed reminded Nick of that of a cold raw steak being dropped into a hot frying pan, and he suddenly realized that he was getting hungry. And then, just seconds after it started, the sparks and their sizzle ceased and part of the mechanism fell to the floor. Axton knelt by the door once more and swung it wide open, and then raised her weapon and leaned forward to take a look.

  “Oh my God,” she mumbled.

  What Nick saw on Axton’s feed made him feel angry and repulsed and broke his heart all at the same time. Crewman Stefani O’Donnell was sitting on the floor in the back corner of the narrow closet on an old dirty mattress with her knees drawn up to her chest, her left wrist cuffed to a pipe, staring at Axton and cringing, obviously terrified. She was naked and dirty and had obviously been beaten and abused. On the floor beside her sat a partially eaten loaf of bread and a collection of water bottles, most of them empty from what Nick could see. There was an old metal bucket sitting a foot or so from her feet, and Nick didn’t even want to think about what that was for. Nor did he want to imagine the smell that must have been assaulting Axton’s nose at that moment.