Alien War Trilogy 1: Hoplite

by Isaac Hooke

  “Sorry, bro,” Rade replied. He moved toward the airlock. “Skullcracker, blast the outer door.” Since only two of them could fit at a time through the airlock, he didn’t want to risk leaving one of them trapped in there. The bioengineered animals strapped into the beds would die when the atmosphere released, but they were abominations anyway.

  “Clear the outside, people,” Rade warned TJ and Manic. “We’re coming through.”

  Skullcracker fired the plasma rifle. The air rapidly vented; beds shifted, and some of the smaller instruments tore past. Rade was nearly struck by a flying scalpel. Perhaps that hadn’t been the best idea after all...

  “Wooyah!” Skullcracker shouted.

  The venting quickly ceased; unconscious specimens on the table spasmed for a few moments, then ceased all movement. A few body parts occasionally twitched in the cold of the void. Rade wondered how long it would take for them to freeze solid. He had heard that the SKs sometimes bioengineered antifreeze into the blood of their creations...

  Skullcracker blew another hole through the hatch, bringing Rade’s attention back to the airlock. In a few moments, he fired again, and they were through.

  “So what’s the plan now?” Manic asked.

  “We go back the way we came,” Skullcracker replied. “And jump out.”

  “Brilliant plan,” Manic said. “Boss, what’s the real plan?”

  Rade didn’t answer.

  “Don’t tell me that’s the real plan?” Manic transmitted. He waited for someone to contradict him. No one did. “It is the plan, isn’t it?” Again, no answer. “You know that route will be crawling with scorpions, right?”

  “Send the HS3 forward, TJ,” Rade said. “We move, people. Keelhaul, you’re in front of me, after TJ.”

  They had retraced their previous route for only a minute when TJ announced: “Just lost the HS3. The return passage is blocked by at least two scorpions.”

  “We’ll just have to shoot our way past them,” Rade said.

  Keelhaul halted beside a side corridor.

  Rade paused beside him and stared into the darkness. His helmet light didn’t penetrate very far, as the curvature of that passageway was even more extreme than usual.

  “Keelhaul,” Rade said. “We have to go.”

  Keelhaul hesitated a moment longer. “They’re calling to me.”

  “Ignore them,” Rade said. “You go down that passageway, you never return. Make your choice.”

  Keelhaul stiffened, and then continued along the original route.

  “Incoming!” Unit C said from its point position. The Centurion toppled.

  Rade glanced forward. The first scorpion had arrived. “Fire!”

  The scorpion toppled under the party’s laser bombardment. When the next appeared, Skullcracker aimed past the Centurions and melted away its upper body with his plasma rifle. It fell forward, completely filling the gap between the first robot and the overhead.

  Once more the remains of the machines slid forward as other scorpions shoved from behind.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to cut our way through them to get back,” Rade said.

  “On drag!” Unit E said.

  Rade spun as Units D and E fired. The pair took down a scorpion that had crept up on them from behind. Rade aimed his blaster at the space between its upper body and the overhead, and sighted the scorpion behind it. He squeezed the trigger; the robot went down, but when it fell, it hit the deck rather than the disabled scorpion in front of it, so that there remained a visible gap above the two machines.

  Another scorpion lurked behind those two, its stinger glowing.

  Rade instinctively dropped to the deck.

  Behind him, TJ fired.

  That scorpion toppled as well, also plunging straight to the deck, so that the gap remained. The curvature of the passageway was only slight here, so that the next scorpion behind that one had a clear line of sight above the wreckages of the fallen.

  That glowing stinger brightened, and Unit D fell with a hole burned through its chest.

  twenty-five

  Guess we’re taking your side passage after all, Keelhaul!” Rade said.

  I just hope we’re not being herded.

  He aimed past Skullcracker and Unit E—both of them had dived to the deck, like Rade—and when he had the robot’s stinger in his sights, he fired, disabling the weapon. “Skullcracker, on point!”

  Skullcracker, who was the closest to the side passage, dove inside. The rest of the party followed at a crouch, essentially reversing their previous combat order so that Manic was at the rear. Unit E assumed drag.

  It was impossible to see what lay ahead, due to the extreme curvature of the new passageway. Despite the deeply corkscrewing deck, the group remained steadily glued to the surface because of the compensating gravity vector.

  The party approached a branch.

  “Which way?” Skullcracker said.

  Rade glanced at the overhead map. Right brought them closer to the core. Left took them outward again.

  “Left,” Rade said.

  Skullcracker obeyed. Rade followed close behind him.

  “Boss,” Manic sent.

  Rade paused. Glancing back, he saw that Keelhaul had halted beside the rightmost branch.

  “I said left, Keelhaul,” Rade said.

  Keelhaul hesitated a moment longer, then turned left.

  “How do we know this is the right way?” Manic sent.

  “Because they’re calling Keelhaul down the other passage,” Rade replied.

  The curvature evened out, and after two more left-turning branches they eventually doubled-back to the previously mapped route. They had skirted the whole scorpion-infested area.

  “Lucky break,” TJ said.

  They continued along the upward-curving corkscrew, passing a hatch they’d breached before.

  The deck suddenly rumbled, and the party began floating upward. Rade felt like he was going to throw up.

  “What the—” Manic began.

  “Looks like they lost their artificial gravity,” TJ said.

  “Or they turned it off on purpose,” Skullcracker said.

  “Keep going, people,” Rade said, swallowing back the nausea. “Push off the bulkheads. You know the drill.”

  Before anyone could actually move, without warning gravity kicked in once more and the lot of them crashed to the deck.

  “Well that was... strange.” Rade pushed himself up. “Let’s move.”

  The passageway tightened and soon they were crawling forward on gloves and knee assemblies. The path widened shortly, and they advanced at a crouch, reaching the final breached airlock.

  “Almost out, people,” Rade said.

  They advanced through the rectangular passageway, and arrived at the edge of the staging area where the party had first boarded. Skullcracker paused at the opening.

  Rade came up behind him. Their headlamps illuminated only a sliver of the mid-sized compartment beyond.

  “Unit E, come forward,” Rade said.

  Rade and the others flattened themselves against the bulkhead to let the Centurion pass.

  “Clear the chamber with Skullcracker,” Rade said when the robot was in place.

  Skullcracker glanced at the unit. “Ready?”

  “I am,” the Centurion replied.

  The pair entered. The Centurion went high, Skullcracker low.

  “Clear,” Skullcracker said.

  Rade entered the compartment, stepping over the wreckages of the original three scorpions. The larger passages that branched out on either side were empty, save for the one where another scorpion resided in a broken pile.

  The far bulkhead still had Tahoe’s five-meter long tunnel boring through to the stars. Floating there amid those myriad points of lights resided the planet they had left behind. It was currently the size of a thumbnail.

  “There’s our freedom, people,” Rade said.

  “I can’t believe you guys came all this way to ge
t me,” Keelhaul transmitted. “You risked everything.” He sounded like he was going to choke up again.

  “Yeah, too bad we’re never going to get back there,” Manic said, his gaze on the distant planet.

  “I’m hoping we won’t have to,” Rade said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Manic asked. “You expect fleet to find us out there?”

  “They’ll find us,” Rade said.

  “If Fret were here, he’d tell you the fleet was long gone,” Manic said. “Or destroyed.”

  “And he’d be wrong,” Rade said.

  “Wait,” TJ said. “What are we going to do about the point defenses?”

  “Maybe we’ll be too small of a target for the defenses to detect?” Keelhaul said.

  “No, TJ is right,” Rade replied. “They detected us well enough on the planet’s surface. They’ll detect us in space, too.”

  “Too bad we don’t have any smoke grenades,” Manic said wistfully. “Or mechs.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Skullcracker asked. “We thrust in random directions until we clear the ship?”

  Rade shook his head. “No. We have to eliminate as many of those point defenses as we can before jetting from the ship.”

  Manic frowned behind his faceplate. “So what you’re saying is, we’re going to spacewalk across the hull.”

  “We are,” Rade said.

  “I’m only surprised our enemies didn’t send any tangos to intercept us here,” TJ said. “Scratch that!” He spun to the left and fired into one of the passageways, where a scorpion had appeared.

  “Out people!” Rade said. “Unit E, cover us!”

  Another scorpion appeared in that broad passageway, and Rade unleashed his blaster at it and then dove into the tunnel. He crawled the five meters to the opening, firing his jetpack in controlled, judicious bursts to aid him, and then pulled his upper body through into empty space. As usual, the sudden absence of gravity was disconcerting, but he ignored the nausea and braced his gloves against the rim of the opening to lift his legs through.

  He set down his boots on the outer hull and activated the supermagnets in the heel. He felt the suction as his feet affixed to the black pentagonal tiles. Up until that point, he had been unsure as to the composition of those tiles—they might have been entirely ceramic or something, rendering the magnets useless.

  Rade waited for everyone else to emerge. Keelhaul. TJ. Manic. Skullcracker.

  “Where’s Unit E?” Rade said. The blue dot of the Centurion was still active on the overhead map.

  Abruptly the robot’s head poked through the opening.

  “Good to see you made it, Unit E,” Rade said. “You’ve certainly lasted longer than the previous Unit E I had.”

  “Thank you, LPO,” the robot replied, taking its place on the hull.

  “Einstein,” TJ said. “It’s callsign is Einstein.”

  “Einstein,” Rade said, smiling. “Well, you’d definitely have to be some kind of genius to survive what we just went through. Or a complete idiot, depending on your point of view.” He studied the external hull blueprints provided by his HUD. “According to my Implant, the nearest point defense turret is here.” He transmitted the location, and a blue square appeared in the distance, overlaying his vision. That was where his Implant had recorded the source of the point defense attack they had received on the surface. “Lead the way, Skullcracker. Let’s go disable ourselves a turret.”

  Rade followed Skullcracker across the black surface. His boots varied the intensity of the magnets based on the angle and pressure applied by each foot, ensuring that he stayed glued to the hull while simulating a one-G environment for the user. It felt like slogging through mud.

  As he spacewalked toward the target along that hull, he suddenly understood why the gravity had cut out earlier.

  Streaks of light passed by overhead, slamming into the surface up ahead: Hellfire missiles, or their equivalents. Small craft also zoomed by.

  The alien vessel was under attack. He could swear those were Avenger class fighters up there, flying past on strafing runs.

  “Uh, I think we won’t have to worry about those point defenses targeting us after all,” Manic said. “Looks like they got their hands full already! And to be honest, the safest location right now is probably up there, out in space.”

  “UC Task Group 68.2,” Rade transmitted on an open channel. “This is Rade Galaal, LPO of Alpha Platoon, MOTH Team Seven, assigned to the U.S.S. Rhodes. Requesting pick-up. Do you read, over?”

  No response came.

  “You think the comm nodes in those fighters received the signal?” TJ asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rade said. “They should have.”

  “Maybe they did, but they think it’s a trick,” Manic commented.

  “Might not even be the UC,” Skullcracker said.

  “I am detecting electromagnetic interference emanating from the hull,” Einstein intoned. “I believe it is severely reducing the range of our signals.”

  “Wonderful,” Manic transmitted.

  A bright flash erupted from the hull just ahead as another fighter zoomed by overhead. The impact location corresponded with the blue square that marked the point defense turret. Rade zoomed in on the area: only a blast crater remained.

  “Our friends just took out the closest turret for us,” Rade said as more flashes went off in the distance around him—some on the hull, some in deep space as fighters were shot down. “I’m going to have to agree with Manic. It’s safer, for the moment, to get the hell off this thing. The enemy has their hands full. Supermagnets off, people. Rendezvous at these coordinates.”

  He transmitted a location five kilometers from the hull, then wrapped his arms around Keelhaul. He deactivated his magnets and waited for Keelhaul to do the same, then released a quick burst from his jetpack. He discharged another burst that would take him to the rendezvous location, then fired lateral thrust, revolving his body. When he faced the enemy ship, he fired a countering burst, stabilizing his rotation: he wanted to watch the dodecahedral ship recede. Flashes continued as fighters flew past in more strafing runs.

  He tried to make several more communication attempts with those fighters. No reply came. He couldn’t see the supercarrier that had launched the craft, but that didn’t mean a thing—any one of the stars around him could be a ship, thanks to the distances at which most space battles were fought. His overhead map didn’t help... not even any of the fighters were displayed on it. He was starting to wonder if they were actually UC.

  Have we wandered into some alien war?

  The dark vessel quickly diminished in size; soon, the only way Rade could tell it was still there was because of the stars the vessel blocked. That and the flashes of light from the fighter attack. When the dodecahedron shrunk to the size of the planet behind him, Rade lost sight of the vessel entirely.

  He reached the rendezvous point and fired stabilizing thrust. The others were already there waiting for him, floating within three meters of each other.

  “Welcome to the party,” Manic transmitted. “It was getting kind of lonely out here. Actually, it’s still lonely as hell. Floating in the void, it’s not like hanging out around a campfire if you know what I mean.”

  “So, what now?” TJ transmitted over the comm.

  “Have any of you been able to raise the fleet?” Rade asked.

  “Negative,” TJ replied. “But according to Einstein, that ship is still sending out some sort of interference. But it’s quickly weakening, the farther away we move.”

  “Would the fleet see us on the thermal band?” Keelhaul asked.

  “No,” TJ said. “The weak thermal signature of our suits blends with the background radiation after only a few klicks.”

  “Our PASS mechanisms are the strongest assets we have right now,” Skullcracker said.

  “That’s a very good point,” Rade replied. The small Personal Alert Safety System was attached to each of their utility belts, and
could transmit a distress call up to ranges of several hundred kilometers. “If we join our power sources to one of the devices, we can boost the range.”

  And we might actually have a chance, then.

  “Who’s the lucky recipient?” Manic asked. “Because if we give up our batteries like you ask, the rest of us will be running on backup power. We’ll have what, an hour left?”

  “Take your pick,” Rade said. “A small chance of rescue, but only an hour until your suit shuts down. Or two days floating in the void, waiting for your oxygen to run out, with no chance of rescue at all... “

  “I’ll take the small chance.” Manic reached into his chest assembly and produced the battery. He gently flicked it toward Rade. “Here you go.”

  Manic’s aim was off, and Rade had to fire a short lateral burst to catch it. He stuffed it into his utility belt. He handed Keelhaul over to Manic for safekeeping, then collected the batteries from everyone else, including Unit E. Then he jury-rigged the power sources to his PASS.

  “Good to go,” Rade said. “Let’s hope this works. Now all we can do is wait. And hope. If no one answers in an hour, I’ll return your batteries.”

  “For what?” Skullcracker said. “So we can merely extend the inevitable?”

  Rade didn’t answer.

  The slow minutes passed. Rade stared at the infinite points of light around him. Phosphenes in his vision added to the starry panorama, and he found himself reliving memories from bootcamp, and then his rating school. He thought of Shaw, and wondered if he would ever see her again.

  “In space, no one can hear you pee,” Manic said, interrupting the quietude.

  “You’re taking a piss right now, aren’t you?” TJ said.

  “Maybe.”

  Rade glanced at Manic and saw the yellow crystals germinating outward from his leg.

  TJ thrusted past and gave the eerily beautiful structure a kick; the crystals scattered in all directions. “Piss starburst!”

  “The human fascination with bodily excreta never ceases to amaze me,” Einstein said.