Harris turned and sprinted down the hall. "Bax, what room are you heading to?"
"The one designated as number four."
"Tawn?"
"I'm heading to number five."
Harris nodded as he ran. "Good, just keep hopping past each other in that same pattern. I'm heading the other way toward fifteen. They each have a firewall. Just blow a hole in it and go through. If we shut them down, the firewall isn't needed. When we meet up, we'll head back to the control room."
For the next hour, one oven after another was shut down while the rooms shook from the assaults going on above. After turning off more than half the ovens, an alert came from Sas.
"Ship activity has been detected above the entrance."
Harris stopped and opened a comm. "Move back to the main control room immediately. Leave the ovens as they are. If they burn, they burn."
Twenty-five minutes later Harris entered the control room. Bax and Tawn were standing at the door to the stairwell.
Bax glanced up. "No sign of them yet, but Sas reports three ships are on the bog surrounding our building up there. We've heard rumbles coming down, as if they're trying to force their way in with small arms."
Harris replied, "They won't get past that door anytime soon unless they use torches. That armor is too thick for their plasma cannons, and they can't use that superweapon down here in the atmosphere."
Seconds later, a heavy vibration was accompanied by a loud boom. The three were knocked to the floor from a rush of air.
Tawn pushed herself up. "That didn't sound good."
Harris rose and moved into the stairwell. After looking up, he hurried back into the room and began to push the door shut.
"Come on! Give me a hand."
As the door closed and sealed, a thunderous sound of water impacting the stairwell floor outside could be heard.
Bax said, "Tell me that's not what I think it is."
Harris leaned against the door. "Water. From the bog. Looks like they bypassed our little building up there and fired directly into the side of that shaft. I looked up and a torrent was coming down at me."
"Well, what are we supposed to do now?"
Harris chuckled. "We wait. No way they're coming down through that stairwell unless they first pump it out."
Tawn glanced at the door going into the drum room. "Think it might be time to relocate. I suggest we load our stuff back on that cart and make a push for the freeze room. We'll have to wait there."
Harris said, "We should switch from our MREs to whatever we can eat in that room to sustain us. Save those MREs in case we have to move."
Bax scowled. "They keep burning these generators up and we may end up with power loss at some point. Might as well end it all with a zapper under the chin if that happens."
Tawn chuckled. "Zapper. Haven't heard it called that since last time you said it."
Harris said, "I think we're a long way from making that type of decision, although you're free to do that whenever you like. We could use the extra meals."
"Har. Har."
In the hours that followed, the bombardment of the oven interfaces for generator one ended. The maintenance bot had abandoned its attempt at containing the fire in oven room sixteen before again sealing the firewall. The smoke and flame had been contained. New firewalls were constructed and installed in the tunnels leading to the neighboring generators. The air in hurricane generator one would remain breathable.
Harris pulled his chair from the cart and took a seat. "I could use a break."
Tawn and Bax followed suit.
"Trapped three kilometers underground," Tawn said. "That's a new one."
Bax crossed her arms. "Our options are limited here. We need a way out. Or at least hope of a way out."
"We have food, water, and air. We're just gonna have to wait this out. Bax, tell us some entertaining stories. You must have a few rolling around in that mostly hollow head up there. Tell us something funny or exciting."
"Not sure I have much on the funny part. Dealing with the two of you was amusing, but you already know those stories. Exciting... well, I did almost get caught by the Earther intel pukes, and that was more than once. I've told you before about screwing up orders and delaying shipments...
"I had just successfully damaged a critical part on one of those massive mining machines. The operator of the machine knew I had done it, and was about to squeal. Anyway, I confronted him in the machine cab. He got all Earther patriotic about it and lunged at me. I moved, he fell, and slid under a rail and into the big grinding wheels. Was a grisly end, but it worked out for me."
Harris chuckled. "You bring such joy and cheer to the world."
"I had another instance where an intel guy uncovered an altered log. He was on his way to confront me when a stack of pallets loaded with supplies fell on him in the warehouse. It was a complete freak accident. One of my people was close by and managed to swipe his data store with the report on that log. After a thorough scrubbing of that info, it was mysteriously found under another pallet in the warehouse."
Bax smiled in thought. "Managed to get a list of their investigators from that store. Made it much easier to manipulate what they saw and heard from that point on. That's how we were able to use them to do much of our dirty work. Place the false info where you knew they would find it. Can't tell you how many of their fellow Earthers they pushed out into that intense sun and heat with no protection. A pretty horrid end if you ask me."
"How many Earthers did you have to kill personally?"
"Believe it or not, not a single one while down there on Eden. I was always able to get someone else, or fate, to do it for me. How about you two? How many Earthers have you killed?"
Tawn scowled. "Not a fair question. That was war."
Bax smirked. "Like the few hundred you blasted that were heading toward Dove there on Eden? I believe a truce was in force at the time, was it not?"
"They were about to destroy that whole city and kill all its inhabitants. That was about twenty-thousand innocents."
Bax held up a hand. "Relax. I was just countering his rude question that started all this. Look, any lives lost were due to the aftermath of this war. None of us here are cold-blooded killers."
— Chapter 8 —
* * *
Bax said, "What about the two of you? Any decent stories? The both of you were on Beckland at one point, weren't you?"
Harris sighed. "That was a bug-infested armpit of a world. My first time there I was young. Maybe seventeen. I thought it looked cool with all the black water and slumped-over, sinister looking trees. Twenty minutes after landing I was ready to leave.
"Like Gondol, Beckland was mostly covered in shallow water, only it had vegetation that would grow and rot. The air stank. The ground, when you found any, was soggy. Your boots would sink down a quarter meter with each step.
"And the black water was full of small biting creatures. They'd pick the paint off your battlesuit in an hour while trying to get at your flesh. If you stuck a bare hand in the water they'd strip it to the bone in seconds.
"And the mosquitoes, wow, big enough to carry off a small animal. Half a dozen of them could suck a liter of blood from a person in under a minute. We called them backstabbers, because the center of your back was where they'd hit if you weren't paying attention. You'd never realize they had popped you until about an hour after when the insane itching began."
"If your battlesuits protected you, why take them off?"
Tawn replied, "Gotta poop and gotta shower. And while you can sleep in them for a few days if needed, they really aren't all that comfortable."
Harris said, "Our camps were these raised platforms they dropped in the muck. We spent most of our time in camp in these giant tents that sat atop those platforms. Walkways would take us between tents. About once a week some moron wouldn't close a flap properly and a half dozen of those backstabbers would get into the shower tent."
Tawn chuckled. "We had some mean
-ass slugs who would purposefully let a few in while you were in there showering. Somehow they thought it was funny."
"If you got bit it would leave a welt that would itch like crazy. Ever had an itch right between your shoulder blades where you couldn't reach? That was their favorite snacking spot. And if you caught one in the act or just after, it looked like a massive wound if you slapped them. Blood everywhere."
Bax asked, "If the place was all swamp, how'd you do any ground fighting?"
Harris answered. "In the muck or in flatboats. And those hung-over trees, you would have thought on a swampy planet they wouldn't be prone to fire, but hit one with a plasma round and it would go up like a torch."
Tawn nodded. "Unlike Gondol, Beckland had an O2 content of 26 percent. Things liked to burn."
Harris leaned back in his chair. "Beckland had a few other nasty creatures as well. You familiar with an Earth alligator? Ever seen one at the historical zoo?"
"The scaly lizard one?"
"Yep. Beckland has those, and they're about five times the size of the Earth ones. In honor of the legendary monster, we called them krakens. Could easily kill a man with a single bite. They'd lay in the muck beside any menta trails."
"Menta?"
"Another native creature, only harmless. They're about the size of a common dog, only with these wide flat feet that allowed them to walk on the bog. Anyway, being a menta wasn't a good thing if a kraken was laying in wait."
Tawn said, "While I was there we lost two or three Bios to them. Rumors I heard were the Earthers had lost hundreds. Our commanders at least cared enough to keep us from harm if possible. For the Earthers it was 'Do this mission and do it now.’ Not a fighting force I would ever want to be a part of."
"So to continue my story," Harris cut in, "I was on patrol with my squad. If we came across a kraken, we would do our best to avoid it without disturbing it. 'Leave it for the Earthers' we would say. Anyway, we came across this one particularly big brute. Our squad leader stopped us just a few meters from its back. We never walked the menta trails, even though they were much easier to move on.
"For whatever reason, this giant beast we had come upon didn't turn back toward us. Could have, but didn't. They had these wide flat feet on them that allowed 'em to literally run across the top of the bog. And they were monstrous fast. So we backed away slowly as we looked for a safe way around.
"Two minutes later, we heard a couple squads of Earthers heading toward us. We hid behind some brush about thirty meters away and watched. They walked right up to the kraken without so much as a care. This enormous thing was almost an eye-blur it moved so fast when it attacked.
"The Earthers’ first mistake was to leave the trail, going into the bog. You can't move in that stuff. You’d often sink up to your waist. Five men were crunched before they knew what was happening. Out of the two squads, only two members stayed on the trail and fled.
"Two others had the composure to take aim and shoot. One blew a hole in the kraken's side before it crushed him in its jaws. The other missed and was whacked by its tail, sending him twenty-five meters into the air. He slammed into a tree and got tangled in the branches. The kraken got to work on the remaining dozen until none were any longer moving.
"It then returned to the tree. The guy had his faceshield open. What a blood curdling scream he let out before he was chomped. Thoughts of that scream still give me shivers to this day."
"And the mission?" Bax asked.
"The mission was to find and dispatch that Earther patrol. That was accomplished, and the kraken succumbed to its single wound. I have a picture somewhere in my archives of me squatting next to it while it still clutched a dead Earther in its jaws. Eyes were still open, so it looked like it was alive. I used to tell everyone it was my pet when I showed that image. It was good for a lot of laughs."
Bax smirked sarcastically. "Yeah, dead people are always funny. What about you, Sluggo? Any good slug stories from Beckland?"
"I have a kraken story that's hilarious. At least it was at the time. I'm sure out of context here it might not be quite the laugh, but it was when it happened.
"So, the Earthers had a similar platform setup to ours. They'd construct an entire base out of these ten-meter-square blocks that were spiked deep into the muck and then bolted together. Gave them a wide deck, sometimes a hundred of meters across, for them to set their camps on.
"So we located this one. Probably two hundred Earthers based there. Each of the construction blocks had four ten-centimeter-square poles it sat on. We managed to sneak under the base. It sat about two meters up off the bog. Explosive charges were placed on about two dozen poles at one end.
"The kraken part of the story goes like this: we had captured three of those massive beasts. Our platoon commander gave us the go-ahead to craft some flat-bottom cages that we could drag through the swamps. It was a pain-in-the-ass to move those things.
"Anyway, a patrol came in, having located this base. Two squads of us dragged our captured kraken for twenty-seven kilometers in those cages. Night time on Beckland never got completely dark, because of its two big moons. One was always nearly full, so nights were dimly lit, but never fully dark.
"The Earthers were also sloppy with their watchtowers. They went up ten meters, where they didn't have a good view of close in because of the trees. We pulled those cages right up to the edge of their camp, blew out the support legs of one end of the platform, and then opened the cages.
"First off, there was mass confusion from the collapse of one end of their platform. Then the mayhem set in as three irritated and hungry krakens sprinted up into the mix. Wow.
"Screams were heard for five minutes straight as the kraken silenced one Earther after another. The corner of the platform we had collapsed also happened to be their armory, so only the tower guards were armed, and we popped them right when the chaos began. They lost two-thirds of their camp that day. Pulled out the next."
"And this story was funny how?"
Tawn shrugged. "As I said, it was funny at the time. The kraken did most of the dirty work. Other than the guards, we didn't fire a shot. It was a big win for our side without losing any personnel. Heck, even the krakens came out of it unscathed, and fed."
"You two are just a barrel of laughs."
The room shook violently around them. The overhead lights switched off, leaving them in blackness.
Tawn said, "This can't be good."
Harris flipped on the lights on his helmet. "Do we know where the power generation for this complex happens?"
Tawn stood. "Supposedly on the other side of the freeze room. Let's go have a look."
A ten minute sprint on helmet lighting had the trio entering a smoke-filled hall.
Tawn said, "Generator room is about half a kilometer up on the right."
Visibility dropped to near zero. Another twenty minutes passed before the target room was reached. The glow from flames could be seen as they rounded the corner.
"This is not good at all. Sas? Are you still with us?"
No reply. "I think we just lost our maintenance bot as well."
Harris said, "Let's see if we can snuff these fires. After that, we work on clearing the air. Mark this point on your geo-maps so you can find your way back to this door. Tawn, see if you can manage that smaller glow to our left. Bax, you come with me."
Flames were shooting from a broken hydrogen fuel line.
"Generator doesn't look to be damaged, just the line. Feel your way around for piping. Anything of this size we can pinch off and take. I'll look for a valve. Hopefully we can shut this down while we effect repairs."
Tawn came over the comm. "I'm at the flame. Should have it out in a sec."
"We're at ours too. We have a broken hydrogen line. The generator itself looks to be intact. If I can find a valve to shut this flow off, we'll see if we can work on bringing it back online."
"This one took damage. Looks like a wall collapsed. The fire is out. There are two other
generators in here. I'll see if I can find them."
Bax said, "Valve is over here. I'm shutting it off."
After ten minutes of searching, Harris was standing in front of the generator Tawn had first approached. "The line going into this one looks to be the same as ours. Now I just need the tools for taking it off to move to the other one."
"I'm heading back out to the maintenance room to see what I can find," said Bax. "Be back in a few."
Tawn moved along the fuel feed running to the other generators. "Tracing these feed lines, looks like they lead back toward your first fire."
Harris nodded. "Maybe we get lucky and that line feeds them all."
Ten minutes into her almost-blind run to the maintenance room, Bax said, "Almost there. And it looks like we have another problem. I have water on the floor and it's moving your way."
Tawn huffed. "Great. Now we're gonna drown three kilometers down and in total darkness. I have about forty minutes left in this suit. The smoke is gonna clog the filtration system before long, leaving us fully on suit air."
"Well make it. Just keep following those fuel lines."
"I'm there. At the generator. Broken line and a lot of melted stuff surrounding it. This line feeds all the generators."
"Good. Bax, you there yet?"
"Should be another fifty meters. I'm guessing I'll be looking for wrenches?"
"I'm guessing fifteen millimeter. If you can find something adjustable, you might bring that instead."
Bax replied, "Just use your scanner and give me an exact number, moron. Didn't they teach you stumps how to properly use your equipment?"
"Sixteen millimeters. Good call."
"On using the scanner or you being a moron?"
"Just find it and get back here with it as soon as you can."
Bax turned the corner into the maintenance room and was confronted by the maintenance bot. "Whoa!"
A voice came over the comm. "How may I be of assistance?"
"Sas? Perfect. We have a fuel line in the generator room that needs replacement. We've identified a second line we can move, but we need the tools."
ARMS Domers Unite: (Book 6) Page 7
