About five minutes later she received a response from Tranquil.
"Already in-system. Party as you planned, and I'll gate-crash."
Patters sent the news to the two Admirals. Neither said anything, but both felt better about their chances of surviving.
Seventy Six
"What the hell are they doing in there?" snarled Snark. "It's been nine hours!"
Brindle didn’t say anything. Snark had been in to check on her five times now. They'd shared some food on several occasions. Each time, Snark made the same sort of comment, and each time with a little more narkiness. Each time he left to recheck the defences, and this time was no different.
Patters was back to watching the navmap, after Mouse had made her get some sleep. Mouse was asleep now, after Patters agreed to wake him before the battle started.
Seasprite was in position in their fleet formation now, and they began to accelerate away from the planet, holding the formation. The plan was unchanged, despite being so heavily outnumbered. Solid shot was now defined as a missile, so the point defences would automatically target it.
Patters was still wondering about the ninety seventh ship. It had come through the jump point well after the rest of the enemy fleet, and was following them at exactly the same speed. She'd pointed it out to Mouse when she first saw it.
"I bet that’s Paulus," Mouse had said. "Command from the rear would be just his style. He's far enough back he can turn tail and run if his fleet gets pasted. And if they win, he gets to the planet without having been in any danger."
Patters had been inclined to agree, but it still bugged her.
A half hour later, the fleet slowed down to quarter speed. They were far enough away from the planet now to not worry about being pinned against a gravity well. Three hours to combat was now reduced to two hours.
Movement on the navmap made Patters look at the HUD. Three green dots had appeared from nowhere. Well not nowhere she realized, but from behind the next planet out in the system, which was in the same basic arc as the planet they'd just left, but far enough away, the vector they were coming on was almost side on to the enemy fleet.
Patters sighed. Tranquil was better coming from there than the second enemy fleet she feared might be there. And she was coming fast. All the same, the enemy fleet was going to have a half hour or so warning, and time to change their fleet formation to counter. She could only hope Tranquil was seen as enough of a threat to take more than half the fleet away from them.
Her tail flicked back and forth, as she continued to watch.
A half hour later, she drew in a sharp breath, and the noise woke Mouse.
Seventy Seven
The Valderian Colonel checked his timepiece. Time to move.
His force was relatively small, but hopefully would be able to take on any force which had come down to the surface of the planet.
He emerged from the cave with the core members of his troop, and looked around. They'd been positioned within a large cave to wait for the main force to engage Seasprite and their allies in space, or to draw the ships away from the planet, whichever happened first. He'd received the message the ships had left, and been given more precise timing. With the enemy ships now well away, and battle now due in two hours, it was time for the ground action to begin.
The rock surrounding the cave was impervious to their scanners, however, this didn’t mean their target didn’t have some way of knowing they were here. They would take all precautions.
The cave they'd chosen to hide in was as close as they dared go to where the most likely place for the enemy team to be making for. The scouts he'd sent out had returned eight hours before with their exact location, and the positions of twelve defenders at the top of a cliff face. Below them was an old shuttle. He'd been relieved to find out the higher ups in this endeavour had got it right for once.
He stomped over to the lead troop carrier, its desert covering now being removed even though it hadn’t been needed after all, and climbed aboard. His troops were ready for a fight. He slapped his thigh, and they all slapped in return. He made his way to the cockpit, where the two pilots waited.
"Time to fight!" he said.
"Time to win!" they replied.
Cover off, the last soldier jumped on board, and the carrier lifted off, hovered, and flew out of the wide mouth of the cave. The other two troop carriers followed.
Mouse woke with a start, and looked where Patters was pointing to a display which had popped up, showing an area of the planet being monitored by the comnavsat in orbit.
He squeaked loudly, and Patters nodded, before opening a channel to Snark.
"Snark. Company on the way."
Snark was standing on the plateau, rehearsing defensive scenarios on his pad.
"What sort?"
"Three aircraft heading directly towards you. I can see them through the comnavsat, and they look rotor based. I can see guns poking out the sides, and they look to have some sort of missile pod on each side. Must be troop carriers."
Snark cursed.
"How did we not see them?" he snarled, almost to himself.
"No idea. Shielding of some kind?"
"Doesn’t matter," humphed Snark. "Find out as much as you can, and I’ll do the same from here. Out."
"Acknowledged."
Snark’s nose twitched, his ears flattened, and his tail thrashed to and fro. If he had fur, he would be alarmingly large by now.
He gave the combat droids orders to find cover and prepare a welcome. After so long in one place, the twelve of them began running.
Snark raced down the stairs like a maniac, and came to a stop at a prepared defensive position. He'd had more than enough time to make it, including dragging a pulse rifle from the shuttle, and making a makeshift tripod to mount it on. He gave more orders to the combat suits ringed around the waterfall in a half circle, and repositioned some based on where the enemy were approaching from, in particular bringing the ones on the other side of the waterfall out. There seemed to be no threat inside the cave, and they'd be more use out here.
Ready for anything, he sent a message to Brindle, telling her to stay put, but prepare to shoot anything which entered. He didn’t wait for a reply, shifting his suit into full protection mode, and taking up the butt of the pulse rifle, aiming it where he expected the first aircraft to appear from.
Game on, he told himself.
Seventy Eight
Jamie, Anna, and Sissness were a long way into the tunnel when it started to narrow, and the ceiling came down low. It was still easy for the humans to move, but it was a bit claustrophobic. Sissness of course, was fine. They started to move in single file, with Sissness in the middle, Jamie at the head, and Anna at the rear. The passage seemed to be leading downwards.
They'd tried to contact Snark, but the coms weren’t working.
"Perhaps we can get Mouse to work on getting coms to work under tonnes of rock," suggested Jamie lamely.
The others grunted.
They finally came out into a cave, not as big as the first, but still large. They took a moment to have a drink and rest, and then moved out into the centre of the cave, Jamie flashing his torch over the walls, looking for anything significant which would tell them what to do next.
"There," said Sissness softly.
She pointed, and Jamie brought the torchlight back to the part of the wall. They could all see it now. A symbol and some writing. The symbol was the same one at the beginning of the ‘righteousness’ tunnel, next to the ancient writing.
Sissness moved forward and started to translate the writing. She finished and read it out.
"Your part is one with the heart of the true."
"Your part. Your role?" asked Anna.
"Heart of the true," repeated Jamie. "Sounds like a Scots clan motto."
He laughed softly. The others didn’t get it, and he stopped.
"Do the ‘gods’ even have hearts?" asked Anna.
They all mulled it over, b
ut got no further.
"You have a role in things," said Sissness. She thought again. "A part, influence maybe."
"Having a hand in things," said Jamie. "Or having different parts to a whole?"
"The symbol," said Sissness. "What do you think it looks like?"
"It’s hard to say. A square with something inside. A circle?"
"A heart?" asked Anna suddenly. "Perhaps the symbol means what the ‘gods’ interpret to mean a heart or truth, being true?"
"Yes," said Sissness. "It’s hard with all our different languages."
"Wait, go back," said Anna. "Jamie said, ‘A hand in things.’"
She placed her hand over the symbol. Nothing. She pushed timidly at first and then harder. Something gave behind the stone, and they all heard a grinding noise deep in the rock itself. A door started to open in the wall, made not of rock, but something smooth, a metal or substance they didn’t recognise.
"Wow," said Jamie. "It’s like something out of those adventure vids I watched as a boy."
"There must have been some form of shielding, which looked like the rock of the cave wall, but is now revealed."
"Its magic," said Sissness, half-joking.
The door opened inwards to the wall, and the darkness beckoned. Jamie un-holstered a gun, and moved into the doorway, his torch cutting a beam into the darkness. The others followed.
A while later, Sissness saw it first. Even though her night sight was ruined by the torchlight, her eyes could see more than the humans. They'd been following another tunnel. While Jamie’s torch still had power, they would soon need to switch to another, while his charged using a backup charge pack he carried.
She cried out and grabbed Jamie by both legs with all three hands, pulled him back awkwardly, and pointed. They'd come to what amounted to an abyss. Jamie’s feet had been moments away from plummeting him into the blackness below.
"How did you see it?" he asked.
"The torchlight showed nothing, and so did my eyes. There is always something visible, even in darkness. Where there is complete black, it’s because there is nothing at all. In this case, no floor."
"Thanks," said Jamie, and meant it. His heart was beating quickly. "You saved my life."
Sissness smiled, but was already looking at the tunnel walls.
"We need to find a way to cross."
Jamie shone the torch on the walls of each side of the tunnel. He then raised it, and shone it on the ceiling. Nothing seemed to leap out at them.
"Perhaps this is the wrong tunnel," said Anna, echoing each of their thoughts.
Jamie shone the torch out over the abyss. The tunnel seemed to just lead into nothingness. Anna was running her hands over the rock face.
"Maybe we can’t see it because it’s shielded like before."
The others did the same thing, Jamie on the other side wall of the tunnel.
Nothing.
Sissness looked down at the floor, and scuffed around. The floor looked like it had been excavated, and was smoother than what they were used to. She scanned the floor with her tablet, looking for anything which might show up under the dust and dirt covering it.
She switched to a useful tool Mouse had added to her tablet. It turned her tablet into an imaging device, which used sound waves to create a map of objects under dirt. He'd thought it might be useful to her, in terms of investigating buried objects.
She took an image using the tool, and looked at the results.
"Quickly," she said to the others. "There’s something under here."
Jamie was carrying an infantry spade, a portable, retractable, and folding trenching tool. He scraped at the floor, and then set to work digging the perhaps centuries of dirt from the surface of the floor underneath, with Sissness guiding him where to dig.
Not far down, Jamie’s spade rang out metal on stone. He worked harder to clear a metre by metre space. Sissness crouched down and used her hands to scrape away the remaining dirt. She took off her backpack, took out her water bottle and a cloth, spilled some of the liquid over the floor surface, and rubbed hard.
Sissness revealed the same symbol as before, the ‘heart’ in the square, but no writing. Just the symbol. The others crouched down next to her.
Sissness placed her paw onto the symbol and pressed. Nothing seemed to happen, so she pressed harder.
Suddenly a beam of light shone down from the ceiling onto the floor, in a circle of light, just smaller than the uncovered square. Sissness scuttled out of the way.
There was a click, and a circular rim appeared in the stone, and a circular trapdoor, lowered down from the surface of the floor.
"Keep going?" asked Jamie, eyebrows raised. "I’d say ladies first, but I think I’d better be the first down into the abyss."
The others nodded. Jamie felt around the edge of the tunnel leading straight down. He shone his torch, and steps appeared, cut into the rock. Handholds appeared as well, seemingly made out of the same substance as the door they'd gone through previously.
Jamie took off his backpack, and took out a coil of thin tough rope.
"I don’t think we should chance it," he said. He looked for somewhere to tie off the rope to, but it was useless. "Ok, as I said ladies first."
Anna stepped forward, and he tied a makeshift harness around her middle, and through her legs, so if she fell, it would be like an abseil harness. They smiled at each other as he tied it. He braced with the rope over his shoulder, and let it out as she descended the stairs. It wasn’t long before she reached the bottom.
"All good!" she called up.
Jamie pulled the harness up, and fastened it around Sissness’ belt.
"Cats always fall on their feet," she said as she disappeared into the shaft. Jamie laughed.
Jamie followed them down, after putting the rope away and pulling his backpack back on, trusting the ladder would take his extra weight.
He made it to the bottom in one piece, and looked up.
"We have to come back this way," he said mock despondently.
Anna was shining her torch around. Suddenly a light came on above them, and then more, and they saw they were in a brightly lit room. Anna shut off her torch.
There was a whirring, and a hologram appeared in front of them. Anna gasped. It was the two ‘gods’ she'd seen at the standing stones. In the hologram, they were enveloped in light, and so it was difficult to pick out their form and features, but Anna was sure it was them.
"You have followed the path, and reached the Hall of Truth," said what looked like the male figure. He seemed to be speaking in English but that couldn’t be true. "Those who search for the Destiny Stone and the Amulet of Truth, must prove their worth. Those who are to be tested, step forward."
Anna took Jamie’s hand, and they both stepped forward. Sissness followed.
Sissness was enveloped by a bright light, so bright she had to shut her eyes tight. When she felt she could open them again, she blinked, and blinked again. Her retinas were overwhelmed by the light, and took a while to adjust.
She was alone in the room. Jamie and Anna had disappeared. They were, just, gone.
Seventy Nine
Snark was ready for them. At the top of the cliff, one of the combat droids was feeding him a live image of the approaching aircraft. In any other situation, he'd be wanting to fly one himself, but this wasn’t normal.
The words 'in range' appeared on his tablet.
"Fire," he ordered the droids on the top of the cliff.
Twelve pulses headed for the lead aircraft, and it immediately changed direction, and dodged away. The ones behind it broke in different directions a second later. The pulses missed.
"Damn they're good," muttered Snark.
The droids fired again, and this time one of the pulses hit the second airship somewhere important, and it began to smoke, and dived in. The lead and third continued to dodge around, now firing missiles towards where the droids were firing from.
From the wrecked aircraft, troo
ps began to emerge.
"Concentrate on the aircraft," ordered Snark. "And move rapidly between each shot."
He was too late, as a bracket of missiles hit a combat droid, and it went down in pieces. The others began running, continuing to fire on the two remaining transports in the air.
Both of them now veered off, and headed over the cliff, aiming to come down close to the shuttle.
"Let's show them who owns this pond," snarled Snark, and he began firing his pulse rifle. The rest of the droids also began firing.
Up top, droids began picking off enemy troops. They were wearing some sort of armour, but two shots from a pulse rifle was more than the armour could take. They went down one after the other. Without any heavy weapons, they were unable to do more than lightly damage the droids.
The third transport took multiple hits, and immediately its troops jumped. The aircraft came down across the water, and crashed into the shuttle. Both exploded. The troops had some sort of mini glider arrangement, and they angled back towards where they'd intended to land. Several of them were picked off, and plummeted into the water. The rest made it to the ground, and hunkered down, waiting for the rest of their comrades.
The first transport had veered away, and managed to land long enough to disgorge its troops, before taking off again. It managed one more hit on a combat droid, before it simply exploded as a dozen pulses hit it all at once.
The troops came on. Snark no longer had any time to check on what was going on anywhere than right in front of his nose. He fired the heavy gun as fast as it would recharge. So did the droids.
Enemy troops went down steadily. Their combined fire was also taking down droids slowly.
Movement on the battlefield slowed, and stopped, as soldiers found cover.
There was no slowing of fire though, as everyone now concentrated on survival.
Destiny Stone (A.I. Destiny Book 4) Page 30
