Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

Imagined hints of motion teased at the edges of my vision, outside the cone of infrared illumination my weapons light provided, and I had to make myself stop jumping and turning at each of them. Finally, though, after another ten minutes of start-and-stop walking, I noticed that it was beginning to get lighter. It made no sense, because I couldn’t see any source for it: no chemical strips, no light panels, no fluorescent algae, not so much as a flickering torch soaked in hundred-thousand-year-old pitch. But it was brighter, about the glow of the sky just before sunrise.

  There were…things on the vast and seemingly boundless floor of the chamber, things that were oddly twisted and patterned in ways that shed my attempts at comprehension. They rose up like trees in some nightmare forest, and if the light had been coming from some singular source, or even a group of singular sources, they would have been throwing eerie shadows. The fact that they had no shadows, that nothing did down here, seemed even more eerie.

  Like all forests, this one eventually came to a clearing, an open space that must have been over two kilometers across. In the center of it were four huge, circular platforms, each hundreds of meters in diameter and maybe ten meters high, looking as if they were carved out of rock---smooth, grey rock and not the sandstone native to these mountains. Hovering motionless over the platforms, suspended on nothing, were four identical cylinders, each at least a couple hundred meters long by maybe fifty meters wide. They were as smooth as glass and each of them seemed to glow from within, a fluorescent, unworldly green, and I knew they were starships the way I knew that the preserved corpse was a Predecessor.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  The voice was Israfil’s, its timbre and mellifluous tone unmistakable, but because of the uncanny acoustics of the endless chamber, the shouted words seemed to come from everywhere at once. I took a knee and scanned for him with the helmet’s sensors, but detected nothing.

  “These ships have waited for us here for tens of thousands of years,” he went on, now seeming to be off to my right. “Maybe hundreds of thousands. What kind of power does it take to keep them floating there for that long? What sort of incredible power must each of these vessels wield?”

  I thought I saw motion somewhere off to my left, just at the edge of the open space, slithering between the tree-like structures. I raised my Gauss rifle and tried to get a bead on whatever it was I had seen. Before I could touch the trigger, glaring white fire splashed over my faceplate and melted droplets of metal from the receiver of my rifle burned miniature craters in the armored plates protecting my forearms.

  I threw myself down and tried to trigger off an answering volley…and instead received a flashing red warning in my HUD that the Gauss rifle was inoperable. I cursed and began scrambling backwards in a low crawl towards cover, yanking at the quick-release for my rifle sling and letting the useless weapon clatter to the floor. Laser pulses impacted around me but all I could see of them was a distorted glare, and I realized that my faceplate had been damaged along with the rifle. If the sensors had worked down here, it still could have displayed their output and put together a computer-enhanced picture for me; but they didn’t, and I couldn’t see a damn thing.

  I tried to raise the faceplate, but the sealing mechanism had been melted shut by the blast, and I finally just jerked the neck yoke seals free and twisted the helmet off my head completely. Now I could see, and what I could see was two of the Cult fighters in full armor running across the open space towards me, firing their laser carbines from the hip to keep my head down. Their shots spalled off the twisted machinery/sculpture/whatever that made up the alien forest without seeming to do them any damage, but I knew from experience that I wasn’t quite as durable.

  My pistol was in my hand, though I didn’t recall drawing it, and I could see the aiming reticle hovering over my vision from my contact lens. I aimed carefully at the faceplate of the nearer of the two troopers and touched the trigger once. Time seemed to slow down and I felt like I could see the rocket engine igniting as the round streaked towards the target it had locked on to, could see the flare of the warhead’s charge turning a metal penetrator rod into superheated plasma as it hit. The Cultist fell in slow motion, at least compared to the speed at which I transferred my aim to the next target.

  This one was shooting at me from the shoulder now, his blasts of light and ionized air coming way too close, sparking off the floor only centimeters from me, close enough that I could feel the hairs on that side of my head smoking. I didn’t flinch, though, just lined up the shot and took it, and watched him tumble head over heels, his armor clattering against the rock floor.

  I waited in silence, trying to listen, trying to look without looking, my eyes slightly unfocussed and hunting for motion. There was nothing. I moved forward and stripped the pulse carbine from the dead Cultist, then shoved spare magazines into pouches designed for Gauss rifle reloads.

  “It’s you, Munroe, isn’t it?” Israfil said, now sounding as if he were way off to my left. I was sure it was a trick of the acoustics; he hadn’t had time to move that far. “Captain Marquette told us he’d given you the coordinates. He told us everything, before long; the Church of the Ancients is quite sophisticated when it comes to hypnoprobes, you know.”

  “He didn’t tell you everything,” I yelled back, figuring my location would be just as hard to detect as his was. “He probably didn’t mention that you’re a pretentious douchebag, and I’m sure he didn’t let you know that I’d be killing you.”

  “How can you see all this and still not believe?” Israfil demanded, his tone sincere in its wonder. “Is this not exactly as the Church has said it would be? Do you not see the handiwork of the very gods in this holy place?”

  Was he trying to distract me, I wondered, or was he really just this much of a windbag? Either way, I needed to move. The pain drugs were beginning to wear off already, or maybe I just needed another dose, and every motion drove daggers into my chest and side. My helmet was gone, along with its medical scanners and injectors, but I could have ordered up a shot of painkillers from my pharmacy organ. I didn’t do it; I needed a clear head, and if pain was the price of that, so be it.

  I got to my feet, but stayed low and wound through the edge of the forest of machines, scanning the open area and the spaces between the huge landing pads, trying to catch a glimpse of Israfil. It was hundreds of meters across, though, and he could be in the cover of any one of the docking platforms for the Predecessor ships, and I was beginning to think it was hopeless.

  “Munroe!” It was Marquette, his voice weak and thready but still audible thanks to the weird way sounds carried in here. “Look for the flash!”

  No sooner had he yelled the words than I saw it: the discharge of a pulse laser, straight up towards the far-away roof, originating maybe fifty yards from me, in the lee of the closest platform. I sprinted for it, wishing I could afford the luxury of dosing myself with stimulants but not wanting to risk the internal bleeding it could cause when I already had a couple holes blown in me.

  There was shouting ahead, and the sounds of a struggle, then the unmistakable smack of a fist into flesh…and another gunshot. The cry of pain that followed was close, and it was Marquette’s. I put on one last burst of speed, hugging the smooth, grey surface of the docking platform and following its curve around, the laser’s stock tucked into my shoulder.

  I got one glimpse of Captain Marquette laid out on his side, writhing in agony, clutching at his chest, before something hit me hard and slammed me to the ground. The rock floor smacked me hard in the back of the head and my vision filled with stars, but my body acted on its own without having to wait for orders from my fogged brain. I threw my arms over my face in time to block the punch I knew was coming, and by the time it had impacted against my forearms, the flashes of light had faded enough to see that it was Israfil himself mounted on top of me, his usually beatific face twisted in a determined rage.

  The laser carbine was gone in the fall, but I wouldn’t have had the time
or space to use it even if it hadn’t been. Israfil was a berserker, pounding one punch after another at my head with all the superhuman strength his cloned muscle tissue implants had given him, and it was all I could do to block them. I tried to thrash him off of me using just my legs, but he had a good twenty kilos on me and probably some training on how to use it, and that was a losing battle. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, but I couldn’t get a shot at his head because he had the reach on me, so I tried a hook into his ribs and caught a glancing blow of his fist across my right cheek for my trouble.

  He grunted slightly at the punch to his floating ribs, but I could feel that he was wearing body armor under his loose, white robes and I wasn’t going to beat him with torso shots. I went for my shoulder holster and he threw his weight into pinning my right wrist to my chest, which left my off hand free and his disgustingly perfect face close enough to hit. I didn’t have a shitload of leverage pinned down like that, but my gloves did have armored knuckles, and there was a sharp crack of what could have been breaking teeth when they impacted his jaw. Blood sprayed out of his mouth in dark droplets as his head jerked aside.

  He tumbled off of me and my pistol came free of its holster, but his hands still gripped my wrist and he was able to yank the gun away and send it skittering across the stone floor. His fingers slipped off and he tumbled to the side, and I rolled in the opposite direction and made a dive for the pulse laser pistol that laid beyond Marquette’s motionless form. I could tell I wasn’t going to be fast enough, though, and Israfil was charging me again before I could get to the gun.

  He tried for another take down, coming in low for my hips, with his head to the side and arms wide in perfect form, but I’d had that same training. I pushed down on his shoulders, splaying my legs wide to keep my balance, and took him to the floor, his fingers slipping off as he tried and failed to grab at my equipment belt. He surged upward, pushing off the ground, but I threw my weight onto his back and slipped an arm over his neck, trying to dig in and cut off his carotid flow.

  It reminded me of the time Gramps had talked me into trying to break a wild horse on his ranch in Utah---Israfil was as strong as hell and keeping him from getting his legs underneath him was almost impossible. He lifted me straight up off the ground like he was squatting a barbell, but I kept the hold around his neck, still trying for a choke-out and not wanting to let him throw me far enough away that he could go for a gun.

  I could feel the desperation as he struggled and I knew he was starting to feel the lack of blood flow to his brain, and he did the only thing he could: he slammed me straight down to the ground, trying to break my hold. The wind went out of me and a wall of blinding pain surged through my chest as my cracked ribs broke, but I clenched my teeth and said the hell with it and gave myself a dose of stimulants. Red filters seemed to fall down over my eyes and the pain took on an almost transcendental quality, radiating from my body with each pulse-beat, but I kept that choke hold stuck into Israfil’s neck.

  He made an abortive attempt to lift me up again, but I could tell that the strength was going out of him, and finally he went utterly limp. An atavistic rage filled me, and I almost felt like holding the choke until the lack of air killed him; but the thinking part of my brain knew that could take minutes, and I might not have that long before I passed out. I let him slump to the ground, then limped slowly over to where my pistol had fallen. The laser carbine was closer, but the pistol was mine, almost a part of me after all these years.

  “Fuck,” I hissed as I bent to pick it up; and agony coursed through my chest and the world started spinning around me. My fingers closed on the grip and I went to one knee for a moment, trying to breathe despite the pain it caused.

  A thought forced its way through the haze inside my head, and I glanced over at Marquette. He wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. His eyes were wide open and he’d gone very still, a pool of his blood spreading beneath him. He’d fancied himself a bad man, a scoundrel, willing to sell anything for a price; but he’d wound up giving his life to save mine.

  I heard a low moan and saw Israfil beginning to stir, coming slowly back to consciousness. I pushed myself off the ground and stumbled back over to him. He looked up, ice blue eyes clearing, staring at me with fanatical intensity out of a face caked in blood.

  “Surely,” he croaked, his voice harsh and distorted through a mouthful of broken teeth, “in this holy place, you can’t take away the…”

  I put a round through his forehead and his skull popped like a child’s balloon, spraying a lifetime’s worth of memories across the smooth, ancient stone. He jerked in one last spasm of firing nerves, then slumped face-down to the floor, joining the Predecessors in extinction.

  “You talk too much,” I mumbled at his corpse.

  Then the world began to spin uncontrollably, and the ground rose up to meet me and everything went black...

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I had a vague sense of movement. It was the first sensation that clawed its way through the darkness, and hard on its heels was a grinding, stabbing agony that was nearly unbearable until I instinctively dosed myself with painkillers from my pharmacy organ. I opened my eyes and saw that I was being carried over someone’s shoulder, and my broken ribs were not happy about it.

  “Put me down,” I rasped, my mouth as dry as sandpaper.

  “’Bout damn time you woke up,” Victor said, tossing me down off his shoulder and onto my feet, then steadying me when I nearly fell over.

  I looked around and saw that we were back up in the entrance cavern; the afternoon glare of the system’s primary was showing through the crooked crack in the wall that led out onto the mountain. Sanders was standing beside me, a hand on my arm, helping Victor to keep me upright. He passed me his canteen and I swallowed a few gulps of water, soothing my parched throat.

  “You okay, Boss?” He asked me, concern in his voice carrying through his external speakers.

  “I’ve been better,” I admitted, “but I’ve also been much worse, so there’s that. How did you find me?”

  “We found the hole pretty quick,” Sanders told me, “but it took us a while to figure out what it was.”

  “He fell down the damn thing,” Victor told me, chortling as he thumped Sanders on the arm. “He was trying to stick his head down there and shine a flashlight into it and he fucking slipped on the algae slime and fell into it.”

  “Anyway,” Sanders interrupted the bigger man, annoyance in his voice, “we heard the gunshots, but by the time we got there, the fun was over.”

  “It wasn’t that much fun,” I assured him, my hand cradling my ribs. It hurt to breathe and the air was thin out here. I wouldn’t asphyxiate, not quite, but I felt like I couldn’t get a full lungful of air. “Let’s get out of here and see if we can contact the ship.”

  I hoped we could, because I sure as hell didn’t want to be stuck here with no food and not much water. I kept one hand on Victor’s arm as we stepped through the narrow entrance, trying not to slip, and shaded my eyes with the other. The primary was dull and red and monstrous in the sky, larger than a sun had any right to be.

  “Kane,” I transmitted over to my ‘link. “Do you read?”

  There was no reply for several seconds, and I was beginning to worry that he’d lost the battle against the assault shuttle.

  “This is Divya.” I blinked in surprise at her transmission. Why would she be answering my call? “Are you okay? Did you find the High Priest?”

  “We’re all fine,” I assured her. “Israfil and his people are dead. Have you contacted Bobbi on the lighter?”

  “Yes, they’re good where they are for now. I told them we’d come dock and pick them up after we checked on you.” She paused. “The ship took a hit to the rear atmospheric stabilizers before we took out the shuttle and Kane is busy figuring a workaround.”

  “All right,” I sighed. Not bad. I hadn’t thought we could pull this off without any casualties. “We need a pickup but the terrain i
s pretty rough here. Tell Kane to land at the plateau where the Cult shuttle touched down.”

  “Roger that, we’ll see you there as soon as we can.”

  I looked at the trail and shook my head. Ten kilometers in thin air with two broken ribs wasn’t going to be fun.

  “Look at the bright side, Boss,” Victor urged. “It’s all downhill from here.”

  ***

  I don’t know if it was the genetics or the nanites or the pure cussed orneriness that got me down that damned mountain; but whatever it was, it was spent and gone by the time we came within sight of the plateau. I dragged my boot soles across the sand and dust and didn’t have the energy to lift them a millimeter, and the only reason I didn’t ask Victor to throw me over his shoulder and carry me the rest of the way was that I knew how badly it would hurt.

  The nanites had repaired some of the damage in the two hours it had taken us to make our way back down, but broken ribs weren’t something that could be patched up in a couple hours, even by a bleeding edge nanite suite. They’d drained me of every spare calorie to do what work they could, though, and I had nothing left. Which was why it took me three tries to register what Sanders was saying to me.

  “Boss,” he repeated, shaking my shoulder in a way that would have made me punch him in the face if I’d had the energy. He pointed across the plateau. “Didn’t there used to be just one life-pod?”

  I rubbed salt and sand out of my eyes and tried to focus. The shuttle was still there, and so was the pod we’d landed in, split in half and sunk a half a meter into the sand from our landing. But a couple of hundred meters off to the right of the assault shuttle was a second life-pod, its braking chute still whipping gently in the wind, the smoke still rising from the explosive bolts that had separated its sections to free its occupants. They were gathered around it, one of them sitting with his helmet between his legs, vomiting noisily and messily, while the other two stood by impassively. One of the two was short and stocky and wearing Marine Recon style armor and helmet, while the other had stripped off most of his vacuum gear and bared his bionic arms to the reflections of the red giant sun.