by S. A. Lusher
It was Corporal Mitchell that had asked the question.
Allan stared at her for a long moment. “We were on a mission to investigate some strange activity at an isolated storage outpost about a hundred miles outside of Lansing.”
He was silent for a moment. The team stirred.
“And?” That was Private Bell. He sounded as nervous as he looked.
“Satellite imagery was showing that more people were coming and going from the base than there should have been. SI put a plant in the base, a new employee, who pretty much figured out right away that there was a smuggling operation going on. We snagged their schedule and decided to make a surprise inspection right about the time the next shipment was supposed to arrive. The resistance was said to be minimal,” Allan explained.
“Whoa, hold up,” Mitchell said. “A smuggling operation? Here?”
“Yes. It was an offworld group. Mercenaries. They'd hit a weapons depots, steal a huge cache of weapons, then lose the heat, store them here, wait for things to die down, then come and pick up the stuff to either use or sell off. They chose this place exactly because no one expects anything to happen around here. Like I said, resistance was supposed to be minimal. But either the contact was paid off or we somehow tipped our hand, because when we landed for our 'surprise inspection' they were ready and waiting for us.”
Allan fell silent. In his minds eye, he could see his squad getting cut down. Four good men and women, dead in minutes.
“What happened?” Mitchell's voice was quiet now.
“We got into the facility, started talking with the guy in charge, and that's when it dropped. Ambush. They cut down two of my squad before we could even grab some decent cover. It was a bad firefight. There were almost a dozen of them...” Allan fell silent again. He thought of crawling across a gritty, bloody floor, grabbing his fallen comrade, trying to pull them to safety, only to watch their body suddenly be riddled with bullets.
“When the dust settled, I was the only one who wasn't full of holes. They were using armor-piercers, top-of-the-line. Everyone was dead but me and some of the base personnel. I arrested them all, called for backup...”
Silence again. Allan listened to the drone of the engines.
“What about you?” Lucy asked suddenly. Everyone glanced at her. “He told you his story, now you tell him yours.”
“Fine,” Mitchell said. She shifted in her seat. “The squad was responding to a comms blackout for a radar facility in the wastelands. When we got there, the situation was worse than we thought. A power relay had blown, destabilizing the generator. Our Sergeant...went inside to try and stabilize it and ordered us to get the wounded out, evac the personnel. We got everyone out, but...the generator blew. Killed Sergeant Gillman.”
More silence followed this grim recollection.
The jump ship flew on.
* * * * *
By the time the ship entered the airspace over the comms relay, Allan had made sure to come up with a quick plan with the others. It essentially consisted of: they would secure the base, then, pending whatever was inside, Lucy would come in and begin repairs. Allan honestly wasn't sure what they would find there. Under normal circumstances, they would have made a call to the outpost at this point. But the lack of comms made that impossible.
Every colonized planet had a worldwide communications network that was largely maintained by a series of satellites in orbit and ground-based relays. The level of importance of the world depended on how thick and powerful that network was. For a backwater planet like Lindholm, and for most isolated mining planets, the network was fairly thin. One downed relay, one damaged satellite could knock out a hundred mile radius, leaving anyone caught in that area in total communications blackout. Thus necessitating such missions as this.
In lieu of a chat over the radio, Allan instead had the jump ship run a scan of the area while he visually hunted for anything out of place, standing in the cockpit now and staring out the front windshield. The place was an absolute desolate wasteland. There appeared to be nothing but cracked, packed dirt for miles and miles. No trees, no mountains, no bodies of water. Just a desert. A pretty shit place to have to live.
The relay was laid out before him, exactly resembling the holographic image he'd been studying on the way out. He could see no pillars of smoke rising into the sky, no gunfire, no real signs of anything wrong. Unfortunately, he could see no activity either. Hell, for all he knew, the whole of the staff could be having a nap or watching a game.
“Anything?” Allan asked as he heard a soft chime, indicating that the scan was complete.
“Well...” the pilot seemed uncertain, “I'm not sure. Something's interfering with the scans. I can't pick up any life signs, but that includes this ship, so...yeah. Not really sure what to make of it.” He glanced up uncertainly at Allan.
He sighed heavily. “Okay, set us down about ten meters away from the perimeter. Keep an open comm link with us,” Allan said. The jump ship came with its own mini booster, just enough to maintain a radio link between the team and the ship itself.
“Got it,” the pilot replied.
Allan returned to the bay in the back and sat down. The ship began its descent.
“Well?” Mitchell asked.
“Something's interfering with the scans. Be ready for anything. Weapons free,” Allan replied.
There was a very slight hesitation, but as the jump ship landed and the crew stood up, they loosed their various weapons and deactivated the safeties. As the engines died, the back ramp began lowering. Allan was first, feeling the familiar dose of adrenaline entering his system as he brought his rifle into play. Only this time it had a bit of a manic edge to it. He could clearly see his team getting gunned down, blood on the air...
“Move out,” he said. “Banks, stay with the ship.”
Lucy put up no argument. Allan led the squad down the ramp and onto the baked earth. For a long moment, there was nothing but the raw, skin-crawling apprehension of exposure. He couldn't stop thinking about snipers and armor-piercing bullets. Nothing moved beyond the chainlink fence that creaked ominously in the winds that washed across the desert landscape. Allan let out a small sigh of relief as they reached the gate without incident.
For a few seconds, he stood there and simply stared at the buildings beyond the fence. There were just over half a dozen of them. Now that he was closer, he could see signs of conflict: a window was broken out, a doorway was half-open and sparking, there looked like there was some kind of structural damage to one of the buildings.
“Okay, get ready, something obviously happened here,” he said.
Allan pushed the gate open. The squeak it made was painfully loud in the quiet. He went in first, the others moving in behind him. He studied the structural layout. There were two buildings to the left, two to the right, two more at the back, all in a ring around the central structure. He made a quick hand signal, sending Mitchell and Bell to the right, while he led Carter off to the side. The technician fell in line behind him automatically.
They moved across the outpost as the wind whispered around them. The first building they were approaching was a low rectangle: the base infirmary. Allan approached the door, which was closed and intact. He hoped it wasn't locked. Carter slid in behind him, weapon at ready. Allan reached for the pad, but hesitated, casting another glance around the area. He could see the others entering another building across the way. There was no immediate negative reaction, so he let his gaze continue sweeping the area. He could see nothing moving.
Allan hit the button and went in gun first as the door slid open.
The infirmary was lit only by the light from the windows and the open door. At first glance, there didn't appear to be anything wrong. Allan moved aside to allow Carter access. The tech moved in, covering the right half of the room while Allan took the left. It was a small room. There were just three examination tables, a medical cabinet, a small space for an office. Allan frowned. Closer inspection revealed, in
fact, nothing out of place.
Carter checked the only other door in the room that led to a closet and reported nothing.
“Mitchell, how's it going over there?” Allan asked over the shortwave radio.
“We're in storage. Nothing out of place here. Preparing to move to the cafeteria,” Corporal Mitchell replied tightly.
“Got it. Nothing in medical. We're heading for the generator room.”
Allan led Carter out of the medical building and moved quickly across to the next structure. It was small, little more than a single-room, single-story shed meant to house the generator. Immediately, he could see that the door had been damaged. As he came closer, he realized that it had been forced in by what appeared to be brute force. The door itself had ripped from its moorings and bent backwards. Allan stepped in and looked around.
There were no bodies, no real signs of conflict in the small room that supported nothing but a simple generator, a table and a closed shelving unit and crate no doubt meant to hold spare parts and tools. The only real sign of damage, besides the ruined door, was the generator itself. It looked like someone with superhuman strength had simply punched it. A large dent had formed in the center of the machinery, tearing a hole into its inner workings.
“Jesus,” Carter muttered. “This isn't coming back online anytime soon.”
“Come on,” Allan replied softly.
As they stepped back out into the sunlight, the shortwave crackled. “I've got blood. And two bodies,” Mitchell reported.
“On the way,” Allan replied.
They crossed the base, passing around behind the communications tower that dominated the center of the area. Allan glanced in the windows, two of which were cracked, one was broken out, but he could see nothing moving around inside. He and Carter rejoined the other half of the team in another small structure that served as the base's cafeteria. It wasn't much larger than a kitchen and dining room in an average apartment.
Three tables with a collection of foldout chairs took up the left side of the room while the kitchen area, which was little more than a refrigerator, a stove, a dishwasher and a lot of cabinet space, took up the right. The tables and chairs had been scattered about. A pair of bodies lay on the floor in random positions, broken by death, in pools of blood. Mitchell was kneeling over one of them, checking the pulse. She glanced up when she noticed Allan and Carter and shook her head.
“They're both dead,” she said.
Bell was crouched by the first body, checking it over.
“How?” Allan asked, recognizing both men from the mission profile. One of them was the man in charge and the other, the one Bell was investigating, was the communications expert. It was fairly obvious how they both died, but Allan felt it necessary to ask anyway.
“Someone crushed the commander's neck with what appears to he raw force. As you can see from the comms tech, someone punched straight through his ribcage and crushed his heart,” Bell said, his voice unsteady.
“Any ideas on how this could be accomplished?” Mitchell asked.
“Armor,” Allan replied simply. “Someone in a suit of top-of-the-line, military-grade power armor could accomplish this.” He fell silent for a moment, thinking. “Okay, finish up here, then take on the comms tower. Carter and I will finish sweeping the back buildings. I want all four personnel found. And be careful, whoever did this might still be around.”
There were some affirmative replies. Allan stepped back out into the quiet morning and glanced around once more. He swapped out his rifle for his shotgun, feeling the familiar apprehension of being in hostile territory settle in once more. As he made for the second to last building, a small structure that was marked as the recreation room on the map, he pondered over the scenario as it was presented to him. Who could be doing this?
They came to the rec room and opened up the door. There was nothing inside but a handful of couches, chairs and holovision screen. He and Carter checked out the only conceivable hiding places and then moved on to the final structure besides the comms tower: the dormitories building. Was it some nutjob in power armor? A serial killer mercenary maybe? But why? There was nothing intricate or drawn-out about those two deaths. If you wanted to torture someone to death, this would be a good place to do it, Allan supposed.
But why the power armor? He tried to come up with another means of being able to punch through a man's chest or a generator casing. He could think of none. They came to the dormitories building and stepped inside. The pair came to a narrow corridor with two doors on either side of them.
They found nothing in any of the bedrooms. Just signs of humanity and lives once lived in the remote outpost.
Mitchell reported in as Allan and Carter finished up their search. “The comms tower is clear. We found a third body: the base medic. His neck is crushed as well. It looks like someone really went to town in here.”
“Got it,” Allan replied. “Banks, come on in. Get to work.”
“On my way,” Lucy said, sounding forlorn and apprehensive over the radio.
Allan looked around the room he was in once more. The place was a mess, but likely not from any kind of attack, just messy living. Cans of vex on the desk and the ground, a pile of dirty clothes in one corner, an unmade bed. He tried to imagine living in such a remote place with the same three people for months on end.
He'd probably go crazy.
That thought made Allan grin darkly. He rejoined Carter back out in the small hallway and they headed back outside. The pair came into the base of the comms tower the same time as Lucy. Allan looked around, studying the damage. Mitchell was right. Someone had really gone berserk on the communications gear. If there were any power running to it, Allan imagined that the gear would be spitting sparks.
He noticed Lucy staring at the dead body in the middle of the room.
“Get to work,” Allan said.
She gave him a very cutting look, but didn't say anything and moved forward, stepping over the corpse that Bell was now kneeling beside and began investigating the ruined equipment. Several minutes passed as Allan considered the situation in contemplative silence. He kept glancing out the windows, expecting to see someone or something, but there was nothing out there but the sun-drenched structures of the outpost.
“I'm going to go up top,” Carter said suddenly. “It's conceivable that I might be able to plug directly into the relay and bypass all this damaged equipment.”
“All right,” Allan said.
Carter left and, after a second, Allan followed him outside. He watched the technician move over to a ladder fixed firmly to the side of the comms tower and began climbing up it. Where was the final body? Where was the killer, for that matter? Allan decided he was going to recheck the buildings and took a step when, abruptly, a thought occurred to him.
“This is Sergeant Gray to jump ship, status report,” he said.
There was no response. He tried once more, then, “Banks, how was the pilot when you left?”
“Fine,” she replied.
Allan frowned, turned and began walking towards the jump ship.
Chapter 04
–The Man in Black Armor–
Allan kept surveying the area as he left the comms tower and began to make for the front gate and, subsequently, the jump ship. It was still where it was supposed to be, though the back ramp was open, which wasn't standard protocol. Had the pilot just been lazy and left it down? It was possible, Allan had seen such occurrences before. It suddenly occurred to him that he should have more directly warned the pilot that there was something wrong, that they had actually found signs of conflict and dead bodies. The radio link had been left open and he should have heard the entire conversation anyway, unless he'd turned off the radio for some reason.
Too many possibilities.
Allan reached the gate and moved through it. He paused once, scanning the area around him once more. Buildings to his back, the jump ship ahead of him, nothing but infinite dirt wastelands in every other
direction. He made himself keep going, unable to shake the growing sense of unease that was welling within him. This was supposed to be a fucking milk run, and now he had three corpses and a ruined relay on his hands.
Allan reached the back ramp and stared long into the interior. It was darkened, powered down, the only light coming from the sun. The door to the cockpit was closed. Bringing his rifle up against his shoulder, finger sliding inside the trigger guard, Allan moved slowly up the ramp. He felt a nervous tension bearing down on him as he stared at the closed door. There'd been too many instances in his life where such a sight always revealed something that was better left unknown, hidden in the darkness. Allan reached the door.
Slowly, he extended his left hand and hit the activation button. The door began sliding open and he brought his hand back, grasping the barrel of the rifle, staring down the sights. He hoped he'd just scare the crap out of the pilot, which would be a welcome anticlimax to the situation. But as the door to the cockpit finished opening, Allan knew there would be no such thing. For a few seconds, he stared in dumb incomprehension.
The cockpit had been ruined.
Several of the screens were cracked, registering only static, and had blood on them. One of the control panels was smashed. If Allan had been approaching from the opposite side he would have immediately noticed something was wrong. Not only was there blood all over the inside of the windows, but the pilot's head had been smashed directly through the glass. Allan stared at the awkwardly hanging, broken body and marveled that not only the pilot's skull survived enough to be forced through glass, but that someone was strong enough to do it. Something seemed to click on inside of Allan, then.
“Squad, we've got a hostile-”
But he was cut off as another voice came onto the radio. “Contact! We've got a contact-” It had been Mitchell, and she was cut off abruptly. Almost simultaneously, Allan could hear the sound of automatic gunfire nearby.
