“Ernie, are you okay?” Mach asked.
“I made it back inside—”
A large slab dropped in the center of the cavern, leaving a gaping black hole above it. More cracks appeared and smaller rocks showered the ground. Mach and Adira pressed themselves against the wall.
“The whole place is gonna cave in,” Adira said.
“You two go,” Sanchez. “I’ll need to manually detonate if I can’t get the timer working.”
“No,” Mach said. “We’re in this together. I’ve never left someone behind. I’m not starting now.”
The lens and cannons spun to face Mach and Adira. They rushed along the ledge toward the blast doors. A head-height pile of debris had already fallen in front of their escape route.
Explosions split the air above and below them. Sanchez leaned over rubble at the chamber’s entrance and fired a burst at the top of the bug. One of the cannons sagged and the lens shattered. Thins wisps of smoke drifted from both devices.
The remaining cannon spun around and fired in random directions, blasting the walls and knocking more chunks out of the ceiling. Adira scrambled up of rocks and lay on top of pile by the left door. Mach reluctantly followed through the gap, knowing it could be blocked at any minute. Something might fall on their heads at any moment and squash them like a sledgehammer hitting a melon if they didn’t get clear of the cavern.
A large mound had now collected on the ground and debris continues to rain down. Only a partial section of the ceiling remained but large pieces of stone dropped out of the darkness above as the cannon continue to fire. The chances of any of them making it out alive if they stay much longer were slim.
Mach still had a partial view of Sanchez and the two old friends locked eyes.
“Get back to the bomb and set that damned timer,” Mach said.
“Run,” Sanchez said and waved a glove in the direction of the transport route. “Some of us need to get back to the ship.”
“Ernie,” Adira said, “You’ve still got a few minutes. Stop fooling around.”
“If you wait for me, and I can’t get it working, we all die, including the rest of the crew and possibly the whole Salus Sphere if these fuckers make it off-planet.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Mach said.
“What’s your alternative? Don’t end up trapped down here with me. I’ll manually detonate in fifty five minutes if I can’t get this sucker working.”
Mach set his watch and shook his head. “Do it now.”
“I was on my last legs before the phane stuck a needle in my chest,” Sanchez said. “Who knows what they did to me? A shot of adrenalin, an even worse parasite? Don’t waste your own lives. I’ll probably be dead by tomorrow even if I manage to configure it.”
“I can’t let your do this,” Mach said. He knew Sanchez spoke the truth, and it was the most practical decision, but he couldn’t bring himself to run. It wasn’t in his DNA. “Go for the bomb. That’s an order.”
Through the dusty air, a smile stretched across Sanchez’s face, although Mach felt the opposite emotion. The big hunter saluted and disappeared behind the rubble into the darkness beyond.
“Sanchez,” Adira said frantically through the comm. “Are you still there?”
“It’s been an honor. Send my love to Tulula and the others. Oh, and stay safe.”
Mach heard a click over his helmet’s speaker and checked his smart-screen. Sanchez had switched off his link. He swallowed hard and punched the rocks with his glove.
The left side of the cavern shuddered and collapsed, blocking Mach and Adira’s view of the chamber but revealed a deep cave behind the fallen section. Thousands of eggs lay on the floor in neat rows. At least a hundred arachnid soldiers stood over them. Their glinting orange eyes collectively focused on the gap at the top of blast doors.
Adira grabbed Mach’s arm. “We need to go.”
Mach resisted while he quickly weighed up the odds. He turned to her. “We’re going, but the phane are coming too. If we’re leaving Sanchez, we need to give him the best possible chance of success.”
Adira nodded, aimed her laser, and fired. Fragments of eggshell shot into the gloomy air. Mach trained his Stinger at the group of closest arachnids and sprayed them with automatic fire. One fell to the ground. The rest advanced, picking their way through the debris on the cavern floor. A boulder dropped through the open ceiling and crushed two of them but it didn’t stop the rest scuttling forward.
A sinking feeling gripped Mach as he slid down the pile or rocks and sprinted up the incline of the transport route between the luminous green blocks. Adira ran by his side and didn’t say a word. He’d never had this kind of experience during a mission before.
The clattering noise of phane in pursuit echoed through the tunnel behind them. Shadows moved through the caves at either side as Mach passed. The last thing on his mind was stopping to investigate.
Stars in the night sky appeared through the distant entrance. Sanchez still had a glimmer of hope, but Mach doubted he would ever see the big hunter again. He glanced down at his smart-screen. They had fifty minutes to get off the planet.
Chapter 25
Mach sprinted out of the mine’s western entrance and glanced around. A road, cut into the gentle foothill of the mountain, zigzagged to ground level eighty feet below. Bright moonlight shone down from the star-filled sky, casting long dark shadows from the trees at the edge of the forest over the open ground in front of him.
Adira shook his shoulder. “Over there.”
She pointed in the direction of an old drilling vehicle parked by the side of the road. A rusty thick corkscrew extended from its front. Mach followed Adira behind the exposed decaying engines at the back and skidded to a stop on the dusty ground.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Mach panned the horizon in his sights and came to an abrupt halt after picking up a massive heat signature. He lowered his Stinger and stared open-mouthed.
The phane mothership raised out of the forest a klick to their right. A huge diamond-shaped vessel, at least ten times bigger than the Intrepid, with twenty cannons of an equally as large ratio. Lights flashed around its midsection. Smaller craft buzzed around the top of it in defensive circular holding patterns.
A track had been beaten through the forest across to the mine, probably from the thousands of creatures that had passed in either direction. Mach switched to telescopic night vision and focused on movement along it toward the ship. Three white bulky shapes crawled near the back. The procession, including the breeders, was fast approaching and would be soon boarding. There would be nothing holding the phane back from taking off, and the Intrepid couldn’t fight that kind of power in the atmosphere or space.
“Holy shit,” Adira said.
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Mach said. “We need to get out of here and hope Sanchez works his magic.”
Adira bowed her head and took a deep breath. A rare sign of emotion, but one Mach shared, not that they had time to think about it. Sanchez was probably on his way out and made a brave decision as his final act. The time for his remembrance would be after they left the planet and he destroyed it. If Babcock had given Mach a hint that he had a cure for the symbiosite, it might be different, but circumstances led them in a different direction. There was no room for sentiment until the job was complete.
The downed fighter drone lay on its belly in a patch of open scrubland to their front. Mach knew that neither Adira nor he had the technical skills to carry out any repairs. The chances were it had been terminally damaged when brought down by phane weaponry.
Arachnid legs, clattering up the transport route in hot pursuit, increased in volume behind them. Adira gestured her head toward the forest in the direction of the bunker. Proceeding on foot was their only option. Whether they had enough time to get back before the bomb detonated was another story, but they couldn’t do anything about it.
Mach and Adira ran across half a klick of op
en land to the closest part of the forest. He glanced over his shoulder twice before reaching the canopy. Nothing immediately followed, but hundreds of phane arachnids streamed out of the mine’s entrance and swarmed on the road outside.
Adira placed her back against a thick tree trunk, took a few deep breaths and checked her smart-screen, searching the map for the quickest way back.
“Carson, Adira, Sanchez… any of you there?” Babcock said through the comm.
“We’re here,” Adira replied. “Lost all comms once we entered the mine.”
“Squid Two’s created a new transceiver network. What’s the status of the bomb?”
Mach breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s due to go off shortly. We need a fast way back to the Intrepid.”
“Define shortly,” Babcock asked. “We’ve just lost the ability to ping it.”
“Forty-five minutes. Sanchez is trying to configure the timer. If he can’t get it working, it’s going to be a manual activation.”
A moment of silence followed. Mach guessed anyone listening would be considering the implications of his last statement. He followed Adira deeper into the undergrowth, edging between tightly clustered trees and swiping away vines.
“We’re still in the air,” Tulula eventually replied. “What’s your location?”
“I’m close to the western entrance. Don’t bring the Intrepid here. It’s too dangerous.”
“You can’t leave him in the mine.”
“It was his choice,” Mach said, recognizing the desperation in Tulula’s voice, but also the need to get things moving. “Go to the bunker, pick up Babs and Sereva, and wait for us.”
The vestan engineer didn’t reply. She, out of anyone, had the deepest emotional connection with Sanchez. Mach had been friends with him for years, and his impending loss was deep, but the last thing the big hunter would want was for the rest of the crew to sacrifice themselves against hopeless odds.
“I’m setting coordinates for the bunker,” Lassea said. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”
The arachnids on the road outside the mine headed away in a column formation toward the dirt trail leading to the mothership.
“You’re around half a klick from the scimitar,” Babcock said. “Head around the side of the mountain back to your original entry point.”
“Can’t Felix bring it here?” Adira asked.
“The vehicle isn’t moving,” Sereva said. “We haven’t re-established contact with him yet. I’m sending coordinates over.”
Mach activated his smart-screen map. A red dot appeared over a stretch of barren land to their east. He orientated himself, looked through the canopy at a distant scree slope, and headed off.
Both he and Adira kept to the edge of the forest to avoid being caught in the open ground between the foothills and foliage.
Trees thinned around the scree slope, which flowed into the undergrowth, and their boots crunched over loose pieces of rock as they trudged over it. Mach stopped at the top and peered back in the direction of the phane mothership, now partially obscured by the western edge of the mountain. More lights buzzed above it, at least twenty ships sweeping the area in wide arcs.
“Over there,” Adira said. “That has to be it.”
He spun to face the opposite direction. The dark outline of the scimitar nestled between two large boulders. Hundreds of twisted black shapes surrounded it. The faint noise of phane engines moaned overhead. Mach knelt next to a tree and shouldered his Stinger. Four weapon-platforms drifted across the sky in the direction of the mothership.
“Looks like they’re all boarding,” Adira said. “I doubt we’ve got long.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Mach waited until the platforms rounded the side of the mountain before bounding down the scree slope to the open stretch of land. He slowly approached the scimitar while scanning for any heat signatures through his scope.
Hundreds of arachnid phane soldiers lay slaughtered around the vehicle. Most sliced by the lasers, others had multiple gunshot wounds. Scratches and tiny dents covered every part of the armored body. Adira knelt, providing cover for Mach. He crept to the open side-door and aimed inside. The only signs of Felix were splashes of blood on the controls and the door’s internal opening lever.
The ammo boxes of the four guns in each corner were empty. The laser’s power reading on the dashboard showed it depleted of energy. Mach scanned the scene outside again. It seemed that Felix had been surrounded by thousands of creatures and went down in a blaze of glory, taking out as many as he could before he ran out of ammo and they forced their way in.
Mach hoped it had been a quick end. Felix struck him as a decent and genuine man. He looked at Adira and shook his head.
She rushed over and climbed inside.
“We’re at the vehicle. Felix isn’t here,” Mach said over the comm.
“Have you seen Squid Two?” Babcock replied. “We’ve lost contact since speaking with you.”
“We haven’t,” Adira said. “I’ll let you know if we do.”
Mach hit the manual start button and held his breath. The scimitar’s engine roared to life. Its four front headlights stabbed into the dark, brightening the pile of corpses in front of the vehicle and the tree line beyond.
“It’s been a few years since I’ve driven one of these,” he said as he eased both levers forward.
The tracks groaned, but the vehicle didn’t move. Mach increased the power, and they jerked forward, grinding over the closest phane bodies. He steered toward the track they initially came down and accelerated, crunching over more dead arachnids until they hit open ground and powered toward a gap in the forest.
Adira looked across and smiled. “You look like you enjoyed that.”
“I can’t say it didn’t have a small level of satisfaction,” Mach said. “I suppose you get yours from your new man?”
“Who said it’s a man?”
Mach was about to reply, but he caught a sign of movement through the reinforced windshield. He turned the vehicle right and its beams flashed over the rock-strewn surface. Thousands of small phanes, like the ones carrying eggs in the tunnel, snaked across the land in an extended line.
A big slice of revenge was waiting for the phanes if they managed to get clear of the planet and Sanchez set the bomb off, but Mach couldn’t resist getting a small slice now an opportunity presented itself. He thrust both levers toward the head of the phane line, taking them slightly off course, but not significantly.
The scimitar’s engines increased in pitch. It surged forward, crushing over small rocks. Adira jerked back in her seat. “Just leave them. We don’t want to attract any attention from the larger ones. You saw Felix’s likely fate.”
Mach remained focused on the ground ahead. “I’m doing this for Felix, and for Sanchez, and goodness knows who else they slaughtered.”
The front of the phane line split and scuttled in multiple directions. The ones behind remained in formation and didn’t have enough time to move. The scimitar’s body vibrated as its tracks squashed hundreds of arachnids into the dirt.
Mach turned the APC back on course and they hit the trail back to the bunker.
Mach maintained the scimitar’s speed as they reached within half a klick of the Intrepid. Dense dark forest hugged either side of the trail, but they hadn’t come across any more phanes. During the quiet journey, he thought about Sanchez. The big man would be spending his final moments in a mine, trying to guess if the team had escaped before detonating the bomb.
If they collectively pulled it off, Mach promised himself that Sanchez would not be forgotten. Too many brave human and alien freelancers in the Salus Sphere had given their lives, only to be quickly erased from history. The only names that echoed through the centuries were the famous CWDF officers celebrated in the official Sphere history. Most hadn’t achieved half as much as Ernie Sanchez.
Babcock and Sereva had boarded the Intrepid. The ship was only half a klick a
way and Tulula had the engines primed, ready for an immediate takeoff. They had fifteen minutes before Sanchez hit the switch. Easily enough time to escape.
“What are you going to say to Tulula?” Adira asked.
“A wise old lactern once told me that if I concentrated on accepting responsibility and avoided assigning blame, I’d never have a problem with a crew,” Mach replied. He omitted mentioning that the crazy old alien then attacked him with a sabre and he was forced to kill him.
“You’re taking the blame for Sanchez’s decision?”
“If I have to. If she needs somebody to focus her anger on.”
Adira slowly nodded.
“How far away are you?” Lassea asked through the comm.
“We’ll be less than a minute,” Mach said. “Do we have a problem?”
“We’ve got twenty problems on the tracking screen. Ten klicks away and closing on our position.”
Mach turned to Adira. “Buckle up.”
He strapped his seatbelt across his chest and thrust both levers fully forward. The scimitar’s engines whined to their maximum. It crashed along the trail, bashing small pieces of rock and fallen trees out of the way. Mach and Adira bounced in their seats and he knew at this speed the APC could easily roll, but they were close enough to risk it.
The top of the Intrepid appeared above the trees, set down in the clearing close to the bunker. Mach steered for the airlock side entrance and cut through a thin patch of undergrowth. Vines and plants whipped against the windshield as they plowed through and burst into an open space next to the ship.
Adira unbuckled, scrambled back into the cabin, and hauled open the scimitar’s damaged door. Mach immediately followed and glanced up at the clear night sky. Nothing was immediately on top of them, but he realized that might change in the blink of an eye.
Intrepid’s airlock door punched open with a pneumatic hiss. Sereva stepped out in an armored suit and swept a rifle around the surrounding forest.
Mach followed Adira past the stern-faced captain and headed straight for the bridge along the ship’s brightly lit white corridors. He checked his countdown timer. Twelve minutes before the bomb was due to detonate.
The Lost Voyager: A Carson March Space Opera Page 19
