Phane soldiers collapsed to the ground. Adira and Sanchez’s guns rattled from the rear of the cabin. Mach focused on his screen and fired at any signs of movement amongst the tangled bodies and twitching legs. He fixed his crosshairs on a smaller soldier and fired repeatedly at its head, checking its stride until it crumpled.
The soldiers behind the immediate slaughter froze for a moment. Mach guessed the team must’ve taken out a quarter of the force. He sprayed the tightly packed arachnids with an automatic burst. Tracer rounds had been loaded every tenth round and zipped through the air in pink streaks, each one slamming into the throng.
“Wait ‘til I’ve fired the laser again,” Felix shouted. “That’s the optimum range for these fuckers.”
“They’re coming again,” Adira shouted.
A second wave ran the Scimitar in the last remnants of natural light. Mach noticed over the heads of the charging arachnids that some were heading back toward the forest.
Felix waited until the wave drew level the pile of corpses scattered the Scimitar and fired the top mounted laser again. In Mach’s peripheral vision, the beam flashed across the front of the reinforced window, cutting down the closest soldiers and maiming ones further behind.
Mach focused on his viewscreen and peppered two phanes who both attempted to climb over the increasingly large pile of their own dead. Sanchez roared insults from the back of the APC as his gun constantly rattled.
“Hold your fire,” Felix said.
A screech rang through the speaker again. The remaining phane soldiers, scattered on the outskirts of the dead and wondered, turned in unison and scuttled back toward the cover of the canopy.
“My ammo reading’s less than half,” Adira said.
Sanchez grunted. “I’m almost out.”
Felix repositioned himself at the controls. “They’ll be coming back. I’ll drop you at the entrance and draw them away.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Mach asked.
“They usually regroup and get reinforced. I’ll leave you behind a pile of rocks by the entrance and draw them to another part of the mountain. Our priority is getting you to the bomb. It won’t happen if thousands of phane are chasing you in toward God knows what.”
“You can’t handle all the weapons on your own,” Sanchez said. “I’ll stay with you.”
“I’ve got a feeling all three of you will be needed in the mines. I’ll be okay. I made it this far.”
Mach nodded. He admired Felix’s cool actions and thinking under pressure, and the plan made sense. The older man would be an excellent addition to the team.
Felix thrust the Scimitar forward. It bashed phane bodies out of the way, crunched over others, and broke free into clear wasteland. He accelerated and headed directly for the gloomy entrance.
“They’re back in the forest,” Adira said. “I can’t see any in open ground.”
“They’ll be watching,” Felix replied. “Make sure you jump straight out when I say. We need to create the impression of circling and heading in new direction.”
The Scimitar slowed. Its side door punched open and wind rushed into the cabin. Felix steered around the back of the large rocks piled twenty meters from the entrance.
“Good luck, chief,” Mach said and extended a hand to Felix. He suspected ex-security officer’s mission had more than a hint of self-sacrifice about it.
Felix firmly shook it and gave him a single firm nod.
Adira and Sanchez crouched by the door.
“Now!” Felix said.
Adira jumped out and landed in a smooth roll. Sanchez immediately followed, crashed to the ground, and scrambled to his feet. Mach took a deep breath, slung his Stinger over his shoulder and leaped out of the door. His landing and recovery matched the big hunter’s for grace.
The Scimitar continued forward, its four headlights flashed against the mountain face as Felix turned it around and headed west. The mechanical sound of its tracks rotating quickly faded.
Mach dusted himself down. “I believe we’ve got a weapon to arm.”
Chapter 19
Lassea watched the video feed generated from Babcock and Tulula’s makeshift mesh network. The scimitar vehicle had dropped Mach, Sanchez, and Adira off close to the mine’s entrance. The swarm of phane soldiers raced out of the forest and followed him as he drove around the mountain.
“They’re in safe,” Tulula said, sitting at the station to Lassea’s right. The vestan manipulated the video feed to zoom in. Both women watched the Intrepid’s crew disappear into the shadows, Sanchez taking up the rear. The hunter looked round once, spat on the ground, and slipped into the dark with his rifle drawn and ready.
The holodisplay chirped each time one of Babcock’s small transceivers were placed and connected to the network.
Tulula opened a channel to Babcock and Sereva in their bunker.
“Confirming receipt of feed; all seems fine from here. Felix has diverted the soldiers away from the entrance. Are you getting this? Over.”
Babcock’s voice crackled over the network. “Confirmed here too. Launch the second fighter drone to give Felix some cover. Over.”
Manipulating the controls to launch the last of the Intrepid’s drones, Lassea noticed that the fighter wasn’t responding to the procedure protocols. It wasn’t the first time this had happened; there was a bug in the software.
“We’ll need to reset the subsystem,” Lassea said, slapping her hand against the arm of her chair. It would take at least fifteen minutes; time Felix might not have. There was no way of knowing how long his scimitar would last if the phanes boxed him in and gave it their full attention.
“No need,” Tulula said, jumping up out of her chair and heading toward the exit of the bridge. “I can launch it manually from the docking bay. It’ll be quicker.”
“Are you sure?” Lassea said.
Tulula stared at her with an expression that said, ‘Of course I’m sure, stupid human.’
“Okay, let me know what I can do here,” Lassea said, hiding her irritation with Tulula’s lack of subtlety.
“You’ll need to do nothing,” the vestan said before disappearing into the dark of the passage, her rapid footsteps echoing as she sprinted to the docking bay, leaving Lassea behind on the bridge in a foul mood.
The young pilot analyzed her emotions regarding Tulula.
At first she was angry with Mach for consistently leaving the two of them behind on the Intrepid. Surely he must have seen that the two of them didn’t get on? She credited him with that much observation at the very least.
Perhaps that was the point, though: that she and Tulula had to find a way to get over their differences.
She fidgeted in her chair on the ship’s bridge, closed her eyes and listened to the natural sounds from the settling engines and the ship’s hull plates. The pings and notes created from the parts bloomed into a kind of concerto, the notes of which at first would sound random, but over time, Lassea had found that there were melodies and rhythms amid the soundscape.
Her mind focused on these sounds. She shaped them like an orb in her inner vision, using the sound as an object in the way she was taught at the academy on Fides Prime.
Battle meditation was supposed to clear the self of fear and doubt and all the other toxic emotions that got in the way of making clear, logical decisions—all of which could potentially spell disaster, so for her, it made sense to become an adept at this mental skill.
Up until now, however, during this entire mission, she’d been unable to get into that deep, clear mind-set that brought about the laser-like precision to control one’s emotions and analyze their root.
Perhaps it was the level of danger that helped her now to slip into the Zen state. Perhaps it was the fear of losing her good friends, all of whom she considered to be her family, which dragged her back to her training.
She couldn’t let her frustration and mistrust of Tulula get in the way of logical thought. Why did she have such a problem
with the vestan?
Lassea focused her breathing and kept the object of sound centered in her thoughts as she probed at the reasons behind her mistrust. Her mind seemed to split in two so that at once she was thinking about Tulula and, at the same time, being aware of the genesis of her thoughts.
It came to her then: it was a mix of jealousy and prejudice.
For years, she had been indoctrinated, along with the rest of the cadets, that the vestans, along with the horans and lacterns, were their enemy. The Axis Combine, the allied force that had waged the Century War against the Commonwealth, was still their enemy, despite the treaty and the current peacetime.
Now that the vestans had severed their ties with the horans, and thus left the Axis to join the Commonwealth, Lassea found that her old prejudices, like her training, had remained behind.
When she pictured Tulula, she didn’t see an ally, a member of the Intrepid crew, she saw a potential spy, an embodiment of the enemy she had been trained to fight against should the need arise.
But the need didn’t arise.
Still, Lassea was certain now that Tulula was indeed trustworthy, when looking at her from outside of herself. It was now up to Lassea to rid her inner thoughts of that indoctrination and give Tulula the trust she deserved.
Then there was the jealousy issue.
Lassea didn’t have too much time to assess this emotion, however. The ship’s song found a new beat underlying its melody: footsteps. Lassea blinked and stretched her arms up, bringing herself back to the bridge and the situation at hand.
“Did I disturb you?” Tulula said as she sat down at her console to Lassea’s right. The vestan looked fresh; she had changed into a clean set of clothes. Not a standard ship’s uniform, but a leather waistcoat that fitted tightly around her thin body, with dozens of pockets intricately sewn around the garment’s contours.
Her dark skin seemed to shine under the bridge’s lights. Lassea realized then something else that she hadn’t really noticed while Tulula was in her standard engineering uniform of coveralls and baggy utility jacket: she was actually quite beautiful. This was the Tulula whom Sanchez saw, Lassea thought.
He didn’t see her as an enemy because he’d always lived and worked within the shaded areas of society, through the gaps of law and the Commonwealth. As much of a rogue he, Mach, and the others might be, they were all clearly free of prejudice.
Lassea felt shame crawl over her skin and she turned away, embarrassed by her realizations and her previous tainted behavior.
“I’m sorry,” she said, staring straight forward at her holoscreen, reading the updated information beamed to the ship via Squid Two and Babcock. The fighter drone had launched and was sending back a low-res video feed as it sped low over the forest top, toward Felix’s position.
“What?” Tulula said, not looking at Lassea as she leaned over her holodisplay, watching the fighter’s telemetry data.
“I said I’m sorry, for my behavior toward you. I realize now that I could have been friendlier toward you, more welcoming.”
The vestan didn’t seem to understand, or if she did, she didn’t acknowledge it, preferring to manipulate the fighter’s controls. It was a reminder to Lassea to also focus; there would be time to talk about the friction between them at a later time—if there was a later time.
“The phane have surrounded Felix,” Tulula said, patching the communications through to Babcock and Captain Sereva. “Launching cluster ballistics.” Tulula turned to face Lassea. “Can you take over targeting while I deal with the blast distribution? I want to get as many of these damned bugs as possible.”
“You and me both,” Lassea said. She did as requested and used her controls to line up with the dual-band targeting array, the twin reticules providing the laser-assisted ballistics pinpoint accuracy.
There were at least two hundred of the phane soldiers surrounding the scimitar now. The sun had set but their heat signatures were clear. The guns on the armored vehicle blasted out a sphere of yellow flame, taking down half a dozen of the creatures that had scuttled onto the roof.
“We’ve got company,” Tulula said, looking over at Lassea. The pilot looked up at the viewscreen that was showing an image feed from the fighter’s secondary camera routed through Babcock’s makeshift network.
A pair of large gun platforms had returned from their circular patrol route and was heading toward Felix’s position. “Damn it, it’s too much for the drone,” Lassea said.
“We’ll just do the best we can. Let’s try to clear a route for Felix first; aim for the phane trapping him in against the trees.”
Lassea nodded and focused her attention on the targeting reticules, making sure she accommodated the writhing mass’s momentum. There were even more of the damned things now. They seemed to just appear out of the ground like magic. So many of them, their carapace armor dully glowing against the light from the Scimitar’s muzzle flashes.
“Die, you bastards,” Lassea said through gritted teeth as she locked in the target about ten meters in front of Felix’s position. “Fire!”
Tulula configured the blast radius and launched the salvo of six coranium-tipped missiles. The rockets blasted out in a plume of purple smoke and arced toward their target. They crashed with a white-hot eruption that temporarily obscured the video feed.
“Did we get them?” Lassea asked, impatient as she waited for the smoke to clear.
“I think it’s guaranteed, but we’ve got the attention of the gun platforms.” The vestan pointed up at the viewscreen. The two bulky laser cannons hovered closer into position and raised their barrels toward the fighter drone.
Lassea reached out to the controls and tried to swerve the fighter away from their trajectory, but the controls were responding intermittently. “They’re trying to jam us!”
Tulula whistled, which Lassea had come to learn was a terrible insult in the vestan’s language. “We’ve got no option but to unload all we have on the platforms before we lose everything.”
“Agreed. Do it.”
While Tulula worked on the commands to fire the full complement of laser power at the gun platforms, Lassea scrutinized the video and saw that their missile strike had indeed taken out a large contingent of phane soldiers. Felix had reversed the APC away from the forest and swung it around so that it was now facing the mountain, leaving the crater of their missiles behind, along with the bodies of a hundred or more of the phane.
“He’s getting away,” Lassea said, with a hint of hope in her voice. She wanted to yell and urge him on, but Tulula slammed her fist against the control panel. “What is it?”
“The lasers missed; the gun platforms anticipated the strike. We’ve taken a hit to the second engine; we won’t have control long now.”
“Babcock, we’re all out of munitions and are badly hit, any ideas? Over,” Lassea said.
A long second ticked by before Babcock responded. “We saw it on Squid Two’s video. There’s only one thing that can be done now—crash the fighter drone into as many of the phane as possible. Give Felix a chance to escape. We’ve done all we can.”
“What about the Intrepid?” Lassea asked.
“Absolutely not,” Babcock responded. “It’s our only way off this planet. We cannot risk any damage whatsoever. That’s a strict order, you understand?”
Lassea remained quiet for a moment as she contemplated what that meant, that they were about to sacrifice Felix, let him die while they hid and waited for Mach and the others. At first she wanted to ignore the order, grab the controls, and take the Intrepid up out of their hidden position and use its full complement of weaponry to blast all the damned aliens to oblivion, but the growing dark shadow over the plane told her that it could be the very last thing she did—there was no way of knowing what kind of power the phane mothership possessed, much less the gun platform and seemingly innumerable soldiers.
“Message received,” Tulula said. She had stood and stepped over to Lassea, placing one of her ha
nds on her shoulder, gripping slightly. Lassea looked up at her wordlessly and watched as the vestan woman leaned over and manipulated the controls that sent the fighter drone diving down into the writhing mass of soldiers.
“He still has a chance,” Tulula said as the two of them watched the final seconds of the video feed. The fighter took just ten seconds to hit the ground, cutting off the feed, but not before a ball of flame erupted all around it.
“He still has a chance,” Lassea said quietly, almost a whisper. The viewscreen went black, and all around her was silence. The pace of Tulula’s breathing seemed to match Lassea’s.
“We did all we could,” the vestan added. “Everything else is beyond our control now. Our responsibility is over. It’s up to Felix now, and the fate of whatever gods he follows.”
Lassea patted Tulula’s hand in a silent gesture of thanks. A lump rose in her throat and she just nodded, knowing that what she heard was the truth, but not feeling any better for it.
“Failure gives more growth than success,” Tulula added, leaving Lassea to remain at her station while the vestan headed back to her own. “You’re a good pilot and crew member. You’re going to experience a lot more death yet; it’s the nature of reality. Don’t let it get into your heart.”
Lassea wiped a rogue tear from her eye and thanked Tulula for the support.
Despite their continued awkwardness around each other and Felix’s likely death at the hands of the phane, Lassea felt that she and Tulula had done the right thing, but the day wasn’t over. Regardless of Felix’s fate, there was still the issue of the bomb and the fate of the Salus Sphere to consider.
“What now, Babcock? Over,” Lassea said over the comm channel.
The old scientist’s words were somber as he replied, “You two ladies did good, and you’ve given Felix a fighting chance. We can only hope for him now—and for the others. Stay alert, and get Tulula to ensure the fusion crystals are fully operational. The very second we get word from Mach that the bomb is armed; we’re going to need to be ready to get off the planet. We’ll likely have to L-jump before we’re out of the atmosphere; there’s a large contingent of EM disturbance beyond the mountain. Over.”
The Lost Voyager: A Carson March Space Opera Page 15
