Alien War Trilogy 1: Hoplite

by Isaac Hooke

  If they can do it, I can.

  The bulkheads continued to tighten, until they had to stoop far forward. Eventually the passage became so cramped that they proceeded on hands and knees, or rather gloves and knee assemblies. It was nearly as bad as the five meter tunnel Tahoe had originally bored into the hull for them, except it went on for much longer than five meters.

  “How the hell did that robot carry Keelhaul through this?” Manic asked.

  “Ain’t that tight,” Skullcracker said. “Man up.”

  Thankfully, the route widened shortly thereafter, and Rade was able to stand on two feet once more. The passageway continued to spiral downward however so that he could never see very far in either direction. He lost track of his spatial orientation within the ship entirely, and without the three-dimensional overhead map, he would have had no idea where he was.

  Occasionally other side passages branched off from the main but they, too, spiraled out of view—sometimes up, sometimes down—hiding what lay beyond. Rade always sent the HS3s a short distance into each of them to make sure nothing waited in ambush just beyond sight.

  “Does anyone else feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter?” Manic said.

  “Manic, please,” Rade said.

  “No, I like it when he spouts stupidities like that,” TJ said. “Makes me feel good, knowing I’m not a pussy. Right, Skullcracker?”

  The latter didn’t answer.

  “Stupido,” Manic said, mocking TJ’s Italian accent.

  “The HS3s have reached another hatch,” TJ said.

  Rade checked his overhead map. Apparently, a wide compartment awaited on the other side. It narrowed into a smaller passageway after about ten meters, and fifty meters beyond that lay Keelhaul.

  “Blow it open,” Rade instructed Unit B, which was still on point. “But wait until we’re in position.”

  Rade and the others, including the HS3s, retreated until the hatch was almost lost by the curve of the passageway, and then they dropped to the deck.

  Unit B fired.

  Once more the atmosphere vented explosively, and the robot on point had to brace its body against the nearby bulkhead to prevent itself from falling over.

  As it waited for that atmosphere to vent, a circular hole abruptly appeared in the robot’s midsection. That hole instantly widened, partially consuming the battery compartment. Unit B lost its balance, and the venting atmosphere carried it backward, slamming it to the deck. Its body slid silently across the metal.

  The atmospheric leakage abruptly ceased and the damaged robot stopped moving. It tossed the plasma rifle across the passageway, toward the party. Unit C caught it from its position on the deck.

  “Run,” Unit B transmitted before its headlamp lost power.

  twenty-three

  The hatch slid aside and a scorpion robot waltzed into the passageway. Its legs and tail were all scrunched up to fit the narrow confines; its stinger was pointed right at Unit C.

  “Fire!” Rade sent.

  The group unleashed their weapons, and the scorpion crumpled, riddled by laser blasts. Another scorpion crawled into the passage behind it.

  “Take it out!” Rade said.

  Most of the group had fired their lasers already, and were waiting for the recharge. Unit C, however, had yet to unleash its plasma rifle, and it did so at that moment.

  The stinger of the next scorpion melted away entirely. The tango continued to slither forward until it abutted against the first, disabled scorpion. It wasn’t able to crawl past the blockage, so it began to push instead.

  Rade and the others fired their recharged lasers, disabling the thing. It toppled forward, landing on the first, blocking the path.

  He had only just exhaled in relief when the pair of robots began sliding forward once again, obviously pushed by another, as yet unseen, scorpion behind them. The uppermost body slid backward as something grasped it: whatever gripped the robot obviously intended to move it out of the way.

  “Retreat, people!” Rade said.

  Staying low, the party quickly backed up until the blockage was completely lost to the bend of the deck. There Rade stood to his full height and fell back to an area where a side passage branched off.

  “We can take them,” Skullcracker said.

  Rade pulled up the footage recorded by one of the HS3s near the front when Unit B went down. He paused it after the Centurion fell, and then zoomed in on the head-sized gap burned into the hatch. Only darkness awaited within the wider compartment beyond. He enhanced the area, changing the focus and exposure levels—the lightfield camera in the HS3 recorded beams of light from all directions, allowing him to make these and other fine-tuning adjustments after the fact. Once he was satisfied, he maintained the zoom and let the video play on slow speed. Using the pattern recognition and extrapolation provided by the processor embedded in his jumpsuit, he quickly realized he was looking at several scorpion robots, tightly packed and milling about in that compartment.

  “No,” Rade said. “There are too many of them. Have a look.” He transmitted the resultant video to his teammates.

  “We can take them,” Skullcracker insisted.

  “Maybe,” Rade finally conceded. “But it won’t be easy. And it will take a while. Remember, time’s ticking away. Every moment we delay is another moment Keelhaul suffers at the hands of our captors. Whoever they are. We’ll find another route.”

  “The rest of the ship is unmapped,” Skullcracker said. “We might spend just as much time wandering around, as we would fighting here. And we might find ourselves faced with another enemy bottleneck. Against worse opponents.”

  “Which is why we’re staying right here, and dispatching the HS3s,” Rade said. “TJ, send the first down this side passage. Have the second continue back the way we came, to the next available side passage. Activate the predictive algorithms—I want them choosing those branches that will take them closer to Keelhaul.”

  “You got it,” TJ replied.

  The party waited, guarding the forward quarter.

  The map slowly filled out beyond the side passage the first scout had taken. The HS3 retraced its steps a few times after encountering dead ends in the form of other hatches, and eventually the scout began to close with Keelhaul’s last known position.

  “That looks promising...” Rade said.

  “I just lost the second HS3 behind us,” TJ announced. “It was ambushed by a scorpion robot.”

  “So they’re already starting to outflank us,” Rade said.

  A scorpion came into view from the forward quarter. Apparently it had managed to break apart the previous two that blocked the passageway.

  Rade and the others opened fire immediately, taking it down.

  It crashed to the deck, revealing another scorpion approaching right after, stinger poised and ready.

  “Drop!” Rade said.

  The Praetor unit was struck before it could obey, and it collapsed to the deck with a finger-sized hole drilled through its head. A runnel was also carved into the pentagonal tiles of the bulkhead behind it.

  Rade and the others returned fire, eliminating the next enemy. It collapsed onto the first, blocking the passage.

  In seconds, that inanimate blockage began to slide forward as the unseen robots behind it pressed onward.

  “Looks like we have an unobstructed route to Keelhaul!” TJ said.

  Rade glanced at his map. Sure enough, the first HS3 had reached a hatch that appeared to be just outside the compartment where Keelhaul was held.

  “Down the side passage, people!” Rade said. “Unit C, lead the way!”

  The party assumed their previous combat order, minus the Praetor and Unit B, and proceeded onward.

  The spiraling passage curved downward and outward. They took a left branch, and another.

  According to the display, Keelhaul was thirty meters ahead.

  “I thought the range of Implants was fifty meters?” Manic said. “Shouldn’t we be getting pings
from Keelhaul by now?”

  “Not if his Implant is damaged,” TJ said.

  “Why would it be damaged?” Manic said.

  “When we found Vicks,” TJ explained. “She had steel probes sticking out all over her head. If the bastards are doing the same to Keelhaul, who knows what havoc that shit is wreaking on his Implant?”

  “Could be something as simple as bulkhead interference instead,” Rade said.

  “What if they moved him after we lost connection?” Skullcracker said.

  “Man, if they moved him,” TJ said. “And all of this is for nothing, then I’m going to shoot Manic in the testicles.”

  “You can certainly try,” Manic responded, sounding completely unfazed, and almost challenging.

  They reached the hatch. Not unexpectedly, there seemed no way to open it.

  “So what now?” Manic asked. “We blow it, and risk venting any breathable environment the captors have prepared for Keelhaul?”

  Rade ran his gloved fingers along the outline. “There has to be a way to open it.”

  He stepped back and aimed his blaster at the hatch.

  “What are you doing?” Manic asked nervously.

  “Just using the sights to see if I can spot anything.” The built-in scope acted as a stabilized zoom—it was much easier to aim than the zoom built into his helmet.

  Without warning the hatch opened.

  “What did you do?” Manic asked.

  “Nothing,” Rade said. He lowered the blaster. “Apparently, they don’t want me to fire.”

  “I thought you had no intention of firing?” Manic said.

  “I didn’t,” Rade replied. “But they wouldn’t know that.”

  There was another hatch just inside. An airlock. Only two could fit the chamber at a time.

  “Skullcracker,” Rade said. “With me.”

  Skullcracker retrieved the plasma rifle from Unit C.

  “You shouldn’t be the one to go,” TJ said. “You’re our LPO.”

  “At this point it doesn’t matter,” Rade said. “There’s only you and Manic left. If Skullcracker and I fall in there, you get to be LPO of a whole team of one, plus some combat robots.”

  “Wonderful,” TJ said. “But I wasn’t suggesting that Manic and I go. What I meant is, you should send two Centurions.”

  “And what if the hatch never opens again?” Rade said. “What if the combat robots have only one chance to free Keelhaul, and they fail? No, I want human beings to handle this. Load your spare jumpsuit parts into the airlock, people. And Skullcracker, with me.”

  Rade waited as the others piled the spare assemblies into the airlock, then he stepped inside with Skullcracker. Not unexpectedly, the outer hatch sealed behind them.

  Rade felt his heart pounding in his neck, the collar of his jumpsuit feeling too tight all of a sudden.

  Atmosphere began to vent into the airlock, judging from the white mist that was coughed up from the bottom of the two bulkheads on either side.

  Rade checked the breathability with his suit samplers.

  Atmosphere breathable.

  He was tempted to remove his helmet if only to spare his oxygen stores, but decided it was best to leave it on, considering he had no idea what awaited on the other side.

  The inner hatch opened. There was no decompression. The atmospheres were equal.

  Rade and Skullcracker stepped inside.

  twenty-four

  Rade went high, Skullcracker low.

  Holding the blaster with two gloves, Rade ran the sights across the compartment. It was indeed some sort of operating theater, as Keelhaul had said. He saw several beds placed side by side, with some in the middle separating the compartment into two aisles.

  There were strange animals Rade had never seen before clamped to those beds. One looked like a giraffe grafted onto the body of a giant spider. Another seemed like a gorilla except with multiple tentacles in place of arms and legs. They were all unconscious. Weaver-like robots resided near most of them, and had telescoped large needles into the shaven heads of the animals.

  Rade glanced uncertainly at the lower part of his HUD: the atmosphere was still rated as breathable.

  The chest regions of those animals were rising and falling, partaking of that processed air; that told him the beings were definitely bioengineered from Earth stock. Once again, he found himself wondering who the aggressors were. Aliens, SKs, or what?

  Keeping his weapon extended in front of him, Rade crouched, and slid the spare jumpsuit parts into the room from the bottom of the airlock—just in case the inner hatch were to close behind him.

  “Search protocol,” Rade transmitted when he was done.

  Staying low, he proceeded forward through the compartment, branching out into the left aisle, while Skullcracker took the right.

  He paused occasionally to search underneath groups of the beds, which were more gurneys than anything else, but spotted nothing. Eventually he reached the far side of the chamber, where Keelhaul was clamped into one of the beds.

  “Clear,” Rade said.

  “Clear,” Skullcracker echoed.

  He stood up, some of the tenseness ebbing from his body. Only some.

  “A monitoring AI must have let us in,” Rade said.

  “Why would it help us?” Skullcracker said.

  Rade nodded toward the beds. “It saw my blaster, remember? Doesn’t want to lose its precious specimens. Especially the new shining jewel of its collection.” His eyes drifted to Keelhaul. Long needles were drilled into the unconscious MOTH’s shaven crown, courtesy of one of those Weaver-type robots perched at the head of the bed.

  When Rade pointed his blaster at the Weaver, those needles retracted, and the robot moved backward.

  “Interesting,” Rade said. He promptly fired his blaster, melting away half those telescoping arms and the component that held them.

  “Careful,” Skullcracker said. “You might make the AI mad.”

  “I hope so.” Rade studied Keelhaul. Blood trickled from the areas where those needles had pricked his shaven head. Rade wondered how far the probes had penetrated. Was he too late?

  He carefully used the blaster to cut away the clamps restraining Keelhaul’s arms and legs. Skullcracker chipped in, speeding up the process. Before they got the last one free, Keelhaul opened his eyes.

  Rade retreated a step, ready to point his blaster at the man. “Keelhaul?”

  Skullcracker had backed away, and while his rifle was lowered, he too seemed poised to leap into action.

  Keelhaul looked around, seemingly confused as to where he was. When he saw Skullcracker, his eyes lingered first on the weapon, then moved to his face. He seemed about to speak, but then his gaze moved on, eventually finding Rade.

  He smiled then, broadly, and burst into tears. “You came for me. You came back. I thought you’d abandoned me. I thought you’d given up.” He tried to hide his face, obviously ashamed that he was crying.

  As Rade watched that big man who had served under him bawl his eyes out, he couldn’t help but feel empathy. He held his blaster away from Keelhaul as he reached forward to touch his bare shoulder with one glove.

  “It’s okay, Keelhaul,” Rade said. “Everything’s going to be all right now. You’re going home.”

  “They took my suit,” Keelhaul said, finally getting the tears under control. “And my cool vents.” The cooling and ventilation undergarments.

  “We have one here for you. Minus the undergarments. Near the hatch.”

  “Oh.” His red eyes gazed toward the hatch, and he brightened when he saw the jumpsuit pieces scattered there.

  “We’re getting you out of here.” Rade cut away the last restraint with his blaster, then lowered the torso assembly of the spare jumpsuit—he had kept the piece secured to the rear of his harness the whole time—and tossed it to Keelhaul.

  “Put this on,” Rade commanded. “As I said, no cooling undergarment. You’re going to sweat a bit.”

  He
shrugged on the torso assembly and grimaced. “Does chaff quite a bit without the undergarment.”

  “You’re a MOTH,” Rade said. “You can take it.”

  Keelhaul finished donning the torso, only to have Skullcracker throw him the leg assembly.

  Keelhaul paused as he pulled it on from the bed. “Did you hear that?”

  Rade frowned. “What?”

  Keelhaul tilted his head. “Tones. And now colors. It’s them.”

  “Who?” Rade said.

  “The aliens.” He paused again. “At least, I think it’s them... I have no idea what they’re saying. Their language seems to be a mixture of flashing colors and pulsing tones. The kind of data you’d expect from a machine.”

  Rade exchanged an uncertain glance with Skullcracker.

  “Looks like Keelhaul is going to need a wee bit of treatment when we get back,” TJ transmitted from outside.

  When the MOTH finished putting on the leg assembly, Rade offered him a gloved hand. “Can you walk?”

  Keelhaul grasped the hand uncertainly and rose to his feet. He took a few tentative steps, then released Rade.

  “Is that you doing the walking, or the jumpsuit?” Rade asked. The suit would only be half-powered by that point, but it would be enough to aid his brother in arms.

  “All me,” Keelhaul said.

  Rade glanced at the O2 levels on his HUD. “By the way, I don’t suppose you know where we can get some fresh oxygen?”

  Keelhaul shook his head. “While these aliens might be trying to communicate with me, they certainly haven’t revealed all of their secrets. Would you?”

  “I hadn’t actually meant to imply that,” Rade responded. “But no. I wouldn’t expect them to.”

  The spare jumpsuit had a half tank of oxygen, so Rade figured he could siphon some from Keelhaul if it came to it. Though that would only extend their collective oxygen levels by a few hours.

  When Keelhaul attached the last component of the jumpsuit, the helmet, Rade checked that the suit was functioning properly.

  “The fit is a bit off,” Keelhaul said. “Especially without the undergarment. But it’ll do.” His eyes dropped to Rade’s jetpack. “Don’t suppose I get one of those?”