And there was the investigation scene, a couple of kilometers up from the tunnel, a kilometer down from the first station on the plain. Multiple aircars were parked outside the fence, which had been opened up so people could come and go. The flashing lights of an ambulance strobed, and the Lieutenant stared at that vehicle for a moment, wondering why it was even here. The thing they had found would not be traveling in that vehicle, but in the Fleet Intelligence retrieval van which was still on the way.
“Welcome, sir,” said the uniformed cop to the officer as he stepped out of the transport.
The words said welcome, but the attitude the Lieutenant was picking up was one of warning off an outsider. He nodded to the cop and walked past him, heading for the actual scene of death. He was thinking of shutting down the scene, chasing all of the civilians away while he waited for the military response, but decided that he would get a look at what they had first. It wasn’t as if the local police hadn’t seen all there was to see.
“Lieutenant Rykio,” said a woman in plain clothes, walking up to him with her hand held out, the expression of someone who knew her crime scene was about to be taken from her on her face. “I’m Lieutenant Matthers.”
Ishuhi’s implant interfaced with hers, sending the query through the police net so both could verify the identity of the other.
“Could you show me what you have?” he asked, pointing to the spot down the tracks where so many people were gathered.
“Of course,” she agreed, leading the way. “I have to tell you, I thought this was just an accidental death when I was first called in, after the track alarm activated. They don’t happen often, but they do happen. Then we saw what we had, and I knew it was one of them.”
Ishuhi was sure he knew what them meant, and as they approached the remains splattered over the tracks, he had to agree that it probably was a case of them. Those were not human organs on the track. They were the wrong color, the wrong smell.
“Have you done a scan on them?”
“Forensics have scanned them with both remotes and nanites,” she said, puffing up like she was insulted that he would have to ask. “Not human, or any other species we’re used to dealing with.”
The information had filtered through the planetary databanks within moments, and been matched within the imperial security secure database. Which had brought him here. He looked over the remains a moment later, including a head that was miraculously intact, sitting on the grass on the side of the tracks, dead eyes staring straight ahead. The head was human, though he was sure that the brain would turn out to be anything but.
The Lieutenant, acting in his role in Fleet Intelligence, sent a signal to the office on the planet. A moment later his orders came back, including the directive recalling him to active duty and putting him in charge of the investigation.
“I hate to tell you this, Lieutenant,” he said, sending her his code change over the net.
“You’re taking over,” she said in a resigned voice, then widened her eyes as she saw that he was now operating in a new persona. “Captain Rykio.”
“This is now an Imperial Fleet investigation scene,” he told her, his eyes looking into hers. “Please remove your people from the scene. I still want you to secure the perimeter while we’re waiting for my people to arrive.”
The policewoman nodded, then stormed off, the set of her shoulders tight. Ishuhi commiserated with her. No one liked to have their toes stepped on. But this had gone from an investigation of an accidental death, with the possibility of foul play, to an investigation of a possible spy ring. From this moment on it was really not important who this person, or thing, was, or what they were going to do. What was important was where they came from, and where they could find the rest of the Yugalyth colony, before the shape shifters went to ground again and hid out.
Minutes later the first of the Fleet air vehicles landed and disgorged the security troops who would secure the area. Soon the civilian police were leaving the area, most of them cursing the Fleet under their breath for taking their case.
“Captain Rykio,” stated the Lt. Commander who came to attention in front of him. “I have two tracking teams here. Orders?”
“Program your chemo and genetic sensors for both the human and Yugalyth samples around the tracks. Then I want you to try and track them back to the point of origin.”
“Any idea what this one was doing here, sir?”
Ishuhi looked over the tracks, trying to reconstruct what had happened in his investigator’s mind. He really couldn’t come up with reason one of the creatures might have needed to get to the tracks. And why now? Why here? And why didn’t it realize that the train was coming?
“Nope, and we can figure that out later, if it becomes important. Right now, I just want to locate this nest of roaches and wipe it out.”
The Lt. Commander nodded at the reference. Roaches had followed humanity into space, even making the journey from the homeworld on the Exodus III. They weren’t really that much of a problem anymore, not with modern pest control techniques, but there were still enough outbreaks that people understood the reference.
“I’ve got one squad of suits to do a high scan, and a squad of Commandos to follow along the ground.”
“Make sure the suits are fully stealthed,” he cautioned the other officer, who was also augmented as a commando, just as Ishuhi was. “I don’t want them to get wind of us tracking them. We have an opportunity here, and hopefully we can get rid of these things once and for all.” He really didn’t believe that. These things had gotten too entrenched into the area. Stomp on one nest and another sprung up. Nevertheless, he had to try.
Moments into the search they found what might have chased the Yugalyth onto the tracks, or at least over the fence. The body of a Mardog, a wolf like pack predator that was the bane of these woods. The beast had been shot by a laser, then partially eaten, probably by pack members. Ishuhi thought that the alien must have run from the predators, taking a shot at one before another knocked the pistol, which they found a short distance away, out of the Yugalyth’s hands. Forcing it to run to the only place it knew it could get away. To the fence and over. It was just bad timing that a train was already coming, and there was no way it could stop in the hundred meters it had.
Sometimes things just happened, circumstances, random occurrences that were the downfall of the best laid plans. This seemed to be one of those cases. And the Yugalyth had passed through the woods recently enough that they could still backtrack them.
“We’ve found something,” called out one of the commandos over the com. Ishuhi was about four hundred meters back, and seven kilometers of rough terrain up from the tracks.
“What have you got?” he asked, looking through the eyes of the commando and seeing the open maw of a small cave. At least small from the outside. “I’ll be up there in a moment. Hang tight.”
By the time he got there two more of the commandos and two spacers in combat armor were under cover on the ground, looking at the dark opening into the granite cliff. The opening itself was about a meter and a half tall by two wide, and was partially covered by brush. Ishuhi looked through the viewpoint of a man still in the air, grunting as he saw what looked like a normal rock cliff and vegetation. He ordered the man to shift, and as the view changed he could finally see the opening, realizing it was naturally camouflaged, and, for all that, still very hard to spot from the air. And unlikely to be spotted from the ground.
“Send in a couple of probes,” ordered Ishuhi, looking over at the nearest suited man.
A pair of small disks lifted from the back of the suit and sped toward the cave opening. They slowed for a moment, then slid into the opening, their passive sensors straining at full power to scan the interior of the cave. The entrance continued as a narrow tunnel for about twenty meters, then opened up dramatically, the ceiling rising to forty meters, while the cave widened to thirty meters. The cave continued back to disappear into darkness, and the sound of dripping w
ater came back over the audio sensors.
“Anything alive in there?” asked Ishuhi, thinking about what he knew about caves, then searching the database. Sure enough, caves on almost every world were well known as lairs for animal life, and a world like Jewel, with its well developed land ecologies, as well as some Earth based life, should have no empty caverns that hadn’t been usurped by intelligent life.
“Not that we can tell,” said the man who was monitoring and controlling the probes. “Nothing on the infrared. No animal sounds, not even bats in the far background.” The spacer was silent for a moment. “Orders, sir?”
Ishuhi lay behind cover and thought for a moment, then noticed that his ears were telling him that the woods were silent around him, when they should have been alive with bird and tree dwelling animal analogues. Something had either taken them, or chased them away. And if he had to bet money, he would have said that the animals near this cave had been taken. The Yugalyth used the biomass of other creatures to make more of them, and he thought that was what had happened here, and in the cave.
He looked back through the sensors of the probes, trying to look into all of the shadows on the walls and not succeeding. “Send out a pulse of actives,” he ordered, and the probes both sent out waves of radar and sonar that covered the walls, bouncing back to the receiving set. Now the cavern was revealed, nine other openings leading into side tunnels, and one at the top leading up in a chimney.
Ishuhi was about to order the probes to start investigating the side tunnels when one of them went off line, and the second showed that first one falling from the air, metal splashing from the front sensor cluster where it had been hit. The second probe swung in the air, searching frantically for the source of the shot, then blacking out as well.
“Crap. Send in nanites on a spread. Let’s see what they can find.”
Two of the suits released a cloud of nanites, the microscopic robots shooting straight through the entrance of the cavern, spreading out as soon as they got through the narrows. As they started their spread a laser stabbed out and took the center from the cloud. They had just spotted the shooter when an electromagnetic pulse slapped the nanites out of the air.
“Let’s get some more people in here,” ordered Rykio over the com. “I want the entire mountain side searched before we commit to searching the cavern.” He thought that secondary force could work to make sure the Yugalyth didn’t pop up from some unexpected position, while a company of engineers could do what they were best suited for. Search and destroy in a fortified, underground position.
Chapter Five
It was men who stopped slavery. It was men who ran up the stairs in the Twin Towers to rescue people. It was men who gave up their seats on the lifeboats of the Titanic. Men are made to take risks and live passionately on behalf of others.
John Eldredge
IMPERIAL ARMY TRAINING FACILITIES, SECTOR IV, MARCH 14, 1002.
“Come on, you lugs,” yelled Cornelius over the com, watching as his company ran over the obstacle course, relearning how to use the armor to get through obstacles while searching for and engaging targets. Most were using the suits as well as people just out of basic infantry training, quite an improvement over their original performance. But not where they needed to be in order to have a chance of carrying out their mission and actually saving the survivors.
The first squad, first platoon went over the first wall, only using enough grabber power to reduce their overall weight to what they would have weighed without the armor. The men grabbed quickly at the slight handholds and pulled themselves up and over, stopping momentarily at the top to engage the targets that were trying to engage them. Twelve of the thirteen men made it over, one slowly falling back on automatic grabbers after being hit by a beam. The Captain replayed that kill on his HUD, noting that the man had done nothing different than any of the ones who had made it.
Just the luck of the draw was the Captain’s guess. It was the same in real combat. Some men were better than others at moving, at staying under cover, and spotting the enemy. And they could still die because they happened to move into the sight of an enemy, while a lesser soldier survived the battle. There had been several times when he moved right, when he might have moved left, or vice versa, and survived because of that.
First squad, or at least its surviving members, continued on across the open, dodging, swerving, taking advantage of what little cover there was. They were getting quite proficient at turning their stealth on and off, levitating at points, crawling at others, anything to get them though the danger zone, which all did, getting to the next obstacle.
Second squad came charging, going over the wall, losing two of their men to enemy fire. Walborski cringed at their simulated deaths. These were his men, he knew all of them well, and he wanted them all to come back from this mission. They wouldn’t, but he still wanted them to, and he tried to figure out a better way for them to attack that kind of obstacle. They could go far around it on this training course, which would not do them a jot of good if they ran into a long wall on the mission.
At the end of the obstacle course they deployed the survival suits, minimal packages of light armor that could protect one from several seconds of laser fire, or a brushing hit with a particle beam. They quickly got the manikins into the suits and attached them to the battle armor they were wearing, then lifted into a low flight and got them out of there. A couple of men were killed along the way, dropping to the ground as frozen statues, their cargo doomed as well.
That afternoon they worked without the suits. They would perform part of the mission in soft uniforms, at least some of them, and they wouldn’t be sure who would be doing that until they were actually into the mission. For the time being they practiced moving and hiding, then shooting and scooting, taking advantage of their strengths as special operations warriors. Moving quickly, hitting targets with first shots. They practiced hand to hand combat against Caca shaped robots, learning and relearning to take advantage of the greater mass and slower reaction time of the aliens.
That evening they went on a night patrol, trying to avoid high tech systems as they struggled to get through automated defenses. Some of the men excelled at this, others were just victims. And Cornelius kept note of who was who, and who would be assigned these roles would be up to him. After that run through they took a quick meal and hit the racks for six hours of sleep before starting another training day. It was a brutal schedule, and everyone knew why it was. Every day they delayed, more innocent people died.
That night Cornelius had one of his dreams, what many people would have called nightmares. Katlyn was still with him, at least at the beginning of the dream. Again he lived through her death, and again he killed the bastards that had taken her away from her. He woke up from the nightmare, sweat pouring down his face, his muscles shaking. He knew what the feeling was. It was not fear. It was rage, pure and simple. He did not fear the Cacas, he didn’t fear his own death. He hated the Cacas, and if his life was the price he paid to kill more of them, he would pay. The only thing he did fear was the loss of the people under him. I should have stayed an enlisted man, he thought before he closed his eyes and forced himself back to sleep. At least then he only had to worry about himself, and the Cacas he had in his sights.
Two days later the company was aboard a large shuttle heading up to orbit. Their ride had arrived, and they were out of planet side training time. They would still be able to take in simulators and hangar deck training on the way. But the next time their feet hit the ground they would be at the launching point before going through the wormhole to New Moscow.
* * *
NEW MOSCOW.
Cat Jeffries tried to hide in the shadows as the monsters walked through the camp, looking for the next harvest. Her dirty clothes were coming apart on her thin body, though she could no longer feel the dirt on her after so long without a bath. She frantically searched for that nonexistent sanctuary, but there was really no place to hide, since the Cac
as checked the tents as they went, and the outsides were set up so that there were really no areas to get away from their sight. One of the huge creatures, much bigger than the adult humans who seemed very large to the child themselves, walked between the tents and pointed with a pair of right index fingers, picking who would die, and, by default, who would live.
The Caca pointed at a woman, who sighed and sat back on the ground, a hopeless expression on her face. Another of the Cacas, one Cat thought of as the weapon bearer, walked up to the woman and put a hypervelocity dart through her forehead. The woman fell dead in an instant, all of her muscles going slack at once and her body slumping over. Another Caca reached for the body, grabbed the woman’s hair, and jerked her off the ground, swinging the body into the cart that was being pulled by four large humans.
The leader pointed again, and the weapon bearer put another dart through the head of a man who looked like he had been overweight, until he had been reduced to the starvation diet of the rest of them. The powerful gatherer grabbed the body by an arm and threw it into the cart. The third victim decided he would not go quite as easily, and turned to run, knocking down a couple of people as he started into a run. He couldn’t outrun the dart, which plowed through the back of his skull and dropped him limp to the ground in mid stride.
The leader looked around a moment, his eyes falling on Cat for a moment, the slit pupils looking at her like she was a side of beef. Which to the alien she probably equated to. She cringed as she waited for the Caca to point at her and shout, but his eyes moved on to another target, and the weapon phutted again, taking another bag of protein.
After taking a dozen more bodies the cart was pulled out of the camp. During the day several others were pulled through, not in sight of the child, but within earshot. Cat thanked God every time the harvest missed her, especially where and when she didn’t have to see it. When night fell other carts came into the camp, these filled with grains and vegetables that the Cacas didn’t eat, along with a broth made with some unknown substance. There were various rumors of what it might be, but no one really wanted to know for sure.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) Page 7
