Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout

by Mark E. Cooper

  She shrugged into her pack leaving the rope secured to the last piton behind her; she’d need it upon her return to get down to the shuttle. She took stock of her surroundings, got her bearings, and struck out with rifle in hand toward her objective. She only had a notional idea where the objective was based upon Leviathan’s position over the planet, but that was better than nothing. She wanted to get within sensor range before commencing her real mission. Anything she learned on the way was fine, but what everyone really wanted to know was what the Merkiaari were doing down here. The sooner she knew if they were even here, the better.

  Dawn caught her still too far from her objective to satisfy anyone, including Gina herself. The storm had moved on; it was still raining, but it was a gentle rainfall now. More a spring shower, but one that seemed set to go on for hours. The sun was visible as a red glow through the clouds, but there was enough light to deactivate light amplification. She did so and took stock. She could keep moving through the day easily enough, but she wasn’t exactly happy about doing that. She preferred night for moving unseen.

  She decided to eat a meal and hunker down for the day.

  A hot meal was very welcome even if it did consist of a ration pack. Viper MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) were not greatly different to those used my any other military unit in the Alliance. She didn’t need a dose of supplements thank god, just a normal meal. She chose beef stew, though she doubted a real cow had ever come anywhere near it, and pulled the tab to heat the contents. Coffee was welcome too. Another tab pulled and she was drinking the scolding brew and ignoring the caffeine warning flashing on her display. If there had been a way, the warning would have been constantly lit because she’d be taking her caffeine fix by intravenous. She snorted as she imagined a tank of coffee on her bank with an IV coming out of it.

  She ate her food and took care of personal business. She buried evidence of both before moving a short distance away to set camp. She chose to put her back to a tree and shoved her pack into the undergrowth to hide it. Her survival bag was made of nano-processed chameleon cloth designed to mimic its surroundings. It was clever stuff; the same the regiment used for tents and camouflaging equipment. It would keep her dry and warm without letting any of her heat escape, while allowing fresh air to permeate so she wouldn’t suffocate. She was all for breathing.

  She sealed herself inside next to her pack in the undergrowth and took her rifle inside with her. It was comforting. She left her sensors on over watch and drowsed for an hour or two, but eventually ordered her processor to put her under. It would wake her without orders the instant any of her alerts were tripped.

  Computer: Initiate maintenance mode. Reactivate combat mode in twelve hours.

  Acknowledged. Maintenance mode in 3... 2... 1...

  Gone away...

  ...and back again. Gina blinked in the gloom of the survival bag and activated light amplification. The sun should just be going down outside. Sensors reported nothing of note. She interrogated her logs but if anything had approached while she slept it had been too small to trip an alert and wake her. She lay still and listened to the rain coming down. Habit had her checking the time, but she knew that exactly twelve hours must have gone by. She waited another hour for full dark and then packed her gear. All being well, her mission could properly begin tonight. Her aim was to gain some real intelligence before morning and then decide on a course of action.

  She moved out.

  Her sensors were telling her quite a bit about topography. The objective seemed to be the higher ground to the east and she wondered why the Merki had chosen it. The hills and valleys were gentle country, nothing startling; no obvious reason to choose the area over somewhere else. If it weren’t so cold and wet the land hereabouts would be decent. She could easily imagine Human settlers clearing it for agricultural use, but she hadn’t seen any evidence of that. If the Merki had been forced down here, they would have had to do something for food. She wondered what it had been.

  The first attack hit her completely by surprise from above and her sensors didn’t make a peep. One moment she was walking silently between trees, the next she was in the air with something around her neck. She dropped her rifle as she was hoisted high into the tree kicking her legs frantically. She had one hand above her head to grab the rope to ease her weight from her throat; a good start. She really did like breathing. Her other hand was going for her combat knife. She reached up and slashed at the rope with its nano-filament edge. Warm liquid flooded over her as the rope parted and she fell. She ripped the rope away from her throat, grabbed her rifle, and rolled away. Finally there was movement on her motion sensors, but she couldn’t see what...

  Her jaw dropped as the entire tree moved to pursue her. Bloody hell! The dangling rope she had cut was no rope, it was part of the tree and it had others. Lots of others! The vines were snaking all over the place seeking and reaching for her. She backed up and the tree followed. It wasn’t very fast. She could outrun it easily. Hell, she could out walk it. She stared fascinated as it approached almost daintily on roots it had tugged free of the earth. The vine she had severed was bleeding, or leaking sap. Whatever. The tree didn’t have eyes or a mouth, but the vines seemed able to see her. Maybe like an insect’s antennae they sensed their surroundings as well as being able to strangle prey. She circled around, not turning her back, and the tree turned to follow. Maybe it sensed movement? She froze.

  The tree stopped moving and its roots burrowed into the ground again. She took a slow step. Nothing. Hmmm... it seemed to have a limited engagement envelope and wouldn’t react until dinner was in range. Good to know. She studied it, carefully documenting its characteristics. The hanging vines were distinctive, the shape of its leaves, its grey coloured bark. She stored its image and stats in her database and named it a strangle tree; it seemed an appropriate name. She flagged it as a threat. Her processor would consider it a hostile lifeform from now on and should recognise its species. She looked around at the other trees and a few suddenly acquired threat assessments and targeting priorities—more strangle trees. All were well within her range of course, but she was outside theirs and they remained inert. At least the woods weren’t all the same species of tree. Not all of them would try to kill her. Of course, the others could just be a different species, but that just made things more interesting.

  She studied her surroundings a little more closely, and finally noticed the bones at the base of the strangle trees. It was no wonder there wasn’t any animal life here; she had wondered about that. The trees ate them! Or killed them to fertilise their roots? James would just love this! She could hardly wait to show him the vid of the last ten minutes.

  Using sensors a little more carefully to examine the trees, she moved on choosing a route that kept her out of the killer trees range. They didn’t seem to like standing too close to each other. Too much competition maybe? There was plenty of room to pass between them as long as she knew where they were.

  The next attack didn’t take her by surprise. Sensors saw them coming from a distance and targeted them, but she didn’t dare shoot them down. The noise might give her away. The hostiles were some kind of flying predator and they liked to flock together like bats. They swarmed her and she beat them out of the air with her hands, stamping upon them to make them stay down, but there were a hell of a lot of them. She had nothing to take them down en masse that wouldn’t give her away… or did she? Suddenly she had an idea, and before she could really think about it she used her ECM. The high frequency sonic blast dropped the lot to the ground, still weakly flapping membranous wings. They were only stunned until she trod them all into the mud.

  She picked one of the dead critters up and examined it. It didn’t look much like a bat really. It looked more like a flying rat or mouse, sort of, and the damn things had sharp fangs. She examined the bites on her hands; nothing serious she decided. They were hardly bleeding. Diagnostics chose that moment to inform her that the rat bat things were venomous and IMS dispatch
ed nano-d to chase down the venom molecules in her blood.

  >_ Diagnostics: Warning, neurotoxic shock detected. Recommend purging and re-hydration.

  >_ IMS: Repairs in progress.

  Sweat suddenly burst out all over her and she felt lightheaded. Purging of the kind she felt like performing would do nothing except lose her lunch and make her dehydration worse. She was miserable enough as it was; she would ride it out. IMS would handle it. She interrogated her processor as the sudden fever had its way with her, and read the analysis of the toxin that her diagnostics had compiled. The neurotoxin was evolved to paralyse prey, not kill. That was comforting, or it was until she thought it through. If her IMS hadn’t been up to the job, she would have been paralysed while the rat bat things literally ate her alive.

  She growled; she wanted to kill the little buggers again.

  * * *

  28 ~ Revelations

  Aboard Assault Shuttle, Approaching Leviathan

  Kate didn’t like the hard suit. It was confining and limited her vision, but worse than that it reduced her enhancements back to Human norms except perhaps those of a purely neural nature such as targeting, ECM, and comms; she had never like limits imposed upon her. If she wasn’t careful, she could lose suit integrity by moving faster than it was designed to handle, or stress its joints by applying too much of her strength. Although hard suits were nominally power-assisted to allow marines to move normally in gear that doubled their weight, they weren’t considered true powered armour. They were basically spacesuits designed to keep the air inside in hazardous conditions found in places like, oh derelict alien ships with lots of sharp edges. Proper powered armour—called mechs by the grunts who used them—could enable a marine to keep up with a viper in the field by allowing them to run for hours or lift weights ten times heavier than normally would be the case, but they were big buggers. They were basically robots, mechanical bodies with marines inside.

  The problem was space.

  They had a full platoon of forty marines with them on the shuttle. Only three or four mechs would have fit lying flat, but worse than that was their complete lack of intel regarding Leviathan. They didn’t know how hard their entry would be, or how manoeuvrable a mech would be once inside. Erring on the side of numbers and relative ease of motion was the sensible course, she supposed, but damn she hated being confined. If she hadn’t liked breathing so much, she would have preferred entering the ship in viper battle rattle, and screw the hard suit. Viper uniforms and armour were designed with their enhancements in mind, giving them full range of motion at speeds the unenhanced could not match; more, they were designed to take the punishment viper strength could dish out, but although they were made of nano-processed materials to reduce IR signatures and were flame resistant to give the wearer a few extra precious seconds under fire, they weren’t spacesuits. Even the standard navy uniform, or shipsuit as they were commonly known, was better at keeping someone alive in vacuum.

  She sighed.

  Nothing to be done but soldier on she supposed, and grinned. Not long ago she had been contemplating a life on the run. Now here she was bitching about silly stuff like what she was forced to wear doing a job she loved. Life was a funny thing sometimes.

  She contacted Stone on viper comm. “Are we there yet?” she whined like a kid. His sigh was the only response and she laughed over the open line between them. “Still breathing is a good sign.”

  “Yeah,” Stone growled. “Not a twitch from the thing.”

  “You really think it’s derelict? The navy will be hot to salvage what they can if it is.”

  “Oh it’s busted alright. What I doubt is that it’s abandoned. Those reactors need maintenance at the very least. If it’s been here for as long as we think, they should have shut down without at least a minimal crew to watch them.”

  “You think?” Kate said, wondering that no one had mentioned it. Maybe they thought it was obvious. That was the problem with the navy, or any other branch of the military really. They all had their own ways and specialisations. It probably hadn’t occurred to any of them to mention the possibility. “How many you figure?”

  “I don’t know, but there are twelve reactors and they have to be monitored around the clock. They are in our ships anyway.”

  “So at least twelve?”

  “I didn’t say that. If I were doing it I would have a central monitoring station for all of them, and a couple of maintenance crews per watch to fix problems. I have no idea what the Merkiaari think is a good number.”

  Kate didn’t either, but preferred to think it wouldn’t be hundreds or thousands. No point in even considering that many, but a few dozen would be okay if they were careful. She decided that she would pretend that’s all there were; for peace of mind if nothing else.

  The shuttle slowed on final approach and the Merkiaari didn’t blast them. Bonus! No response from the ship at all could mean Stone was wrong. Maybe it had been abandoned and the reactors had just carried on and not shut down. It was possible. Of course it might also mean the Merki were being cagey and just wanted to sucker them inside. She could drive herself nuts considering all the possibilities. They didn’t plan to fly the shuttle into the Leviathan; they could easily do that, the rip in the hull was awesome this close, but the plan was to exit the shuttle and use their suit thrusters to enter. She was just as happy either way, which was not at all.

  She was really not easy about this mission in her own mind. It was stupid! They were risking their lives not to save people, as she had been more than happy to do on the Shan campaign, but were simply sticking their noses out to see if they would get shot off before bringing the big brains over. She glared at Professor Franks sitting sandwiched between the marines. He couldn’t see the glare, all the suit visors were silvered. His suit’s colour was subtly different to the white nanocoat that the marines normally used to allow them to keep track of him when the time came. His was a dirty gold or off white, just enough to be different without making him stand out as a target too much. She would like to set his nanocoat to red! That would give the Merki something to aim for. Ha!

  She and Stone had set their suits to viper black of course. It gave the marines something to home on once in the ship, but would make them hard to spot in the dark vacuum of space. They had suggested the marines do the same, and they would when they exited the shuttle for the crossing, but once inside they would go back to white to prevent targeting accidents. Kate didn’t make mistakes where targeting was concerned. If she shot someone, it was on purpose. Stone too.

  The pilot announced arrival, and the bay was pumped down to vacuum before the ramp cranked down. The marines stood and faced the opening behind her except the two detailed to babysit Franks. Lucky bastards.

  “Sensors up!” Stone ordered the marines. Viper sensors were always up of course. “Quick as you like gentlemen, into the belly of the beast!”

  Kate snorted, Stone was channelling Gina. He sounded just like a gung-ho marine. He probably thought it would be comforting for their guys to hear something familiar. He ran at the opening and threw himself into space with her barely two steps behind him. He engaged thrusters in a brief pulse of azure light, orientated toward the Leviathan, and began pulling away. She checked her sensors for the marines; she didn’t want to scorch one accidentally, and engaged her thrusters for a nice five second burn to narrow the distance to Stone, but not overtake him. He’d only get pissed.

  He still hadn’t forgiven her for dumping him back at Helios even though he admitted later that he hadn’t expected to go with her to Northcliff. It was a conundrum she had yet to solve. Basically, he was pissed because she hadn’t followed his plan to take Gina with her after popping a round in his head... or something like that. She didn’t get it. She had managed to get away without hurting him or anyone else! Why couldn’t he be satisfied with that? Maybe he just didn’t like it that she had fooled him that last day. Could it be that simple? Was his pride hurt?

  “Watch it,�
�� Stone said over viper comm. “Some debris here.”

  She blinked and realised she was approaching too fast. Fool! Pay attention to what you’re doing! She flipped herself over expertly and applied thrust in the direction of motion to slow herself. Nearby the marines performed the same evolution and all entered the great ship safely. Everyone activated their lamps. This was a dangerous moment. They were basically lighting themselves up, presenting perfect targets for the Merki. At least the ship’s weapons couldn’t get to them now. That was a blessing. All they had to worry about from now on was about a million Merkiaari troopers raging and howling for Human blood.

  “Sensors indicate no hostiles,” Stone announced on the all units channel. “Repeat no hostiles.”

  “Copy no hostiles,” Lieutenant Cook responded for his platoon.”

  Kate didn’t bother to reply, her sensors were clear as well, but she didn’t trust them to remain that way. She had a window open giving her visual as well as sensor data behind her so that she could keep an eye on her charges. They weren’t sheep, more like wolves, but she felt responsible for them and wanted them safely behind her out of immediate harm’s way. Another window gave her long range scan data, but in the confines of the ship that wasn’t saying much. All the tech and hull material degraded what she could pull in. It gave an impression of open spaces ahead, but not what occupied them. No Merki yet, her TRS would know before she did, and it hadn’t reacted. Yet.