Old Guy and the Planet of Eternal Night (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 6)

by Timothy J. Gawne

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  I attempted some jury-rigged repairs of my android body, but without appropriate components I could barely stand up unaided let alone walk. The suits found me an old mechanical wheel chair from a human hospital, and I took to rolling myself around on the flat smooth fortress floors. I felt silly but the suits were all respectful – I passed Captain Brendan in a hall and he actually waved at me!

  I checked the manifests, and found a style of vehicle that I liked. It was an armored car, eight-wheel drive, no weapons but very well protected with a smoothly curved composite outer shell. It had a large rear-opening hatch and internal storage roomy enough for my humanoid body, my three repair drones, and a decent amount of random supplies, just in case. Officially classified as a medium armored transport type 40B, its unofficial name was the roach.

  I located a roach in a vast underground parking lot filled with vehicles of all kinds. Superficially it looked to be in pristine condition, but on closer inspection the fuel cells, hoses, lubrication seals, etc. had all rotted out. I started to check out the other roaches in the lot, but none of them were in any better shape, so I went back to the first one. It took a while, but eventually I managed to scavenge or reconstruct enough components to get it back into reasonable working order.

  I test-drove the roach around some of the internal access roads. It was pretty nimble, the eight wheels could swivel independently so you could have it pivot in place or even crab sideways. Not up to my own standards, mind you, but not bad.

  I toured around the inside of The Fortress for a bit, only being careful to avoid getting too close to the enemy-held sections. I continued to be amazed at just how massive this place is. I know I’m being repetitive here but it’s the truth. There are sections with four-lane highways wide and tall enough that a cybertank could drive through them, but if you searched The Fortress on foot you could easily miss them… I passed an internal reservoir big enough that a human could water-ski on it and not feel cramped for space.

  I drove though a section near one of the big geothermal generators. These are sealed units, each the size of a small city, so there is nothing to look at but endless walls of access ports and warning signs. The low thrumming of the machinery penetrates the surrounding area like a giant’s heartbeat.

  The ‘quest’ (technically a combined heavy reconnaissance-in-force and search-and-destroy mission, but that’s wordy) began. One hundred of the suits were left behind to try and guard The Fortress. Many of these had been banged up so much that even replacement parts from their deceased brethren had not restored their mobility, so they could not have kept up. They hunkered down in defensive positions at chokepoints behind layers of barricades and deadfalls. Few as they were they would put up a good fight, but if the enemy attacked en masse they would be overwhelmed.

  I was a little surprised that General Trellen left his second-in-command, Colonel Villers, in charge of the terminal defense force. It was almost a guaranteed suicide mission – but then so was everything else, and I guess the general wanted a steady hand at his back.

  There were enemy skitarri outside The Fortress, even on the side opposite from the occupied part, so we had to break out. The massive gate slowly opened up and a phalanx of Captain Brendan’s heavy troopers blasted away with their plasma cannon, e-beams, and even a few of their precious reserve of missiles. The enemy was in the open and slaughtered where they stood, and a hole was punched in their lines.

  One of the wall-mounted plasma cannons that I had helped repair was still operational, and it tore a swath through the enemy before one of the ancient power couplings gave way.

  A light force of scout suits sped off through the gap and fanned out across the landscape. Two companies of medium suits followed, one taking up position at each flank, laying down fire and keeping the skitarri at bay while the rest of the force assembled and headed off. It was just before the rear guard left that I got the signal to proceed, so I sped off in my eight-wheeled armored car. We were all through before the enemy could regroup, the massive fortress door slowly closing shut behind us.

  We sprinted at 100 kilometers per hour. The skitarri tried to pursue but they could not maintain that pace and they fell behind. The suits regrouped and spread out over a front ten kilometers across and five deep: claustrophobic by my standards but then their long-range communications are poor, and without really heavy weapons they might need to be close-ranked to concentrate their firepower. The pursuers outrun, we dropped back to a cruising speed of 60 kilometers per hour.

  Near The Fortress the terrain was lit by the glow of the windows. From a distance it hardly looked occupied. The enemy forces at its base almost un-noticeable against the five-kilometer high walls. As we headed on we started to climb out of the canyon, and as we crested the lip and achieved the flat terrain beyond, the light levels dropped abruptly. Twenty kilometers further and there was only a faint glow in the distance, and soon even that was gone, and the night descended.

  My roach had none of the advanced sensors of my main hull, so I was driving almost blind. I had a thermal sight, but all I could were the hot spots of the armored suits around me. I was allowed a single nano-powered external light. It was barely enough to let me avoid driving into rocks, but that was about it. I listened to the occasional status reports of the armored suits on their close-range secure communication systems. Deep space is less bleak.

  General Trellen had assigned a medium suit, a Sergeant Wolfram, to escort me. He loped along easily 30 meters to my left. He never said much but he was always polite. I asked if he wanted to ride on the side or rear of my roach, but he said no, he’d rather we stayed spread out. On the thermal viewer he was a large orange blob that rhythmically bobbed up and down as he ran.

  We took fire from ahead, and the suits countered with a volley of missiles. The impacts briefly lit up the area: the enemy was a herd of something like large blue elephants, with trunks ending in projectile weapons. The armored suits blasted them to bits at long range without loss themselves. I raised sergeant Wolfram on the comm system.

  What are those called?

  “Megaphants,” said the sergeant. “Not very dangerous, unless you are alone.”

  We continued on. One hour went by, then another. There was a faint, sickly greenish glow on the horizon right in line with our course. As we progressed, it got brighter and I could start to make out details. At first it looked like an enormous glowing crystal formation – as big as the largest cybertank - but then it jiggled as if made of gelatin.

  We altered course to give it a wide berth. As we passed the glowing light let us see deep inside it – it appeared to have no internal mechanisms or structures of any kind, it was just this large glowing mass of jiggly stuff. A colloidal life form?

  Do you have a name for that?

  “No,” said Sergeant Wolfram. “It could even be harmless. That’s rare on this planet but it does happen. Orders are to keep an eye on it but leave it alone if it doesn’t take hostile action.”

  It took half an hour to pass the glowing yellow thing. It felt sinister to me, wrong somehow – probably just my imagination. At least it lit up the terrain, dimly but enough to make driving easier. It did nothing but peacefully jiggle in place until we left it behind, the glow vanishing slowly in the distance.

  After that it got black again, and monotonous. Until it began to hail.

  At first I didn’t know what was happening. I heard loud thumps from all around me, then the death-scream of one of the armored suits as he was torn apart.

  “Active sensors!” said General Trellen. “Light it up!”

  The suits turned on their spotlights and radars, and I got a good look at what was attacking us. It was hail, but not any sort of hail that I had ever seen. It was chunks of jagged ice, some as large as my roach, sleeting down like a heavy artillery barrage. At first I was dumbfounded – how could ice chunks this big form in the atmosphere? – but then I was too busy trying to dodge them. That was challen
ging, for they were moving fast, bouncing off each other at strange angles and the light didn’t reach them until they were almost on top of you.

  I survived, but by the time the hail ended, 40 of the suits hadn’t.

  Trellen had us go back to dark running.

  Time stretched on, and, mere submind that I am, it had to fight to avoid being sucked into ‘highway hypnosis.’ I ran some vigilance subroutines and snapped out of it.

  We came to an area where there was no light, but the thermal signature started to increase. Trellen signaled us to stop, and the scouts advanced cautiously. I couldn’t see them, but from their locators they seemed to be heading into a broad low depression. One of the scouts sent that he had come to a sudden drop off, and had barely avoided falling.

  “This may be the place,” said Trellen. “Everyone look sharp. Lights on.”

  The suits all turned their spotlights on, and I did the same. There was a vast circular hole in front of us, lined with golden pillars and elegant curving walkways with ornate railings of polished brass. There were multiple levels, descending deeper than our lights could carry. The different levels were connected to each other with cleverly cantilevered stairways that looked too long and delicate to stand on their own.

  It was stunningly beautiful. On this planet of monsters it was more shocking than any acid-blooded hagfish thing. I hailed my guardian sergeant.

  Have you ever seen anything like this?

  “No,” said Sergeant Wolfram. “It looks human-built, but I’ve never heard of any lost colony out this way.”

  Trellen ordered some scouts into the structure. They cautiously entered the curving walkways, and a few gingerly tested the slender stairs – which proved to be much stronger than they looked, and did not sag or sway under the weight of the scouts. A large fraction of the suits surrounded the edge of the hole and provided over-watch, while the rest fanned out to guard against an attack from the surrounding area.

  The scouts had made it about three levels down, and several squads of medium suits had begun to follow them, when the enemy struck with a withering barrage of heavy firepower. Unlike so many of the baroque horrors that I had encountered on this planet, here the enemy was efficient and deadly. They appeared to be using railguns and smart grenades. In the first few seconds two dozen armored suits died, torsos blasted open, legs blown off and the rest of the body falling down the hole into the darkness at the bottom…

  To their credit the armored suits reacted calmly and professionally. Those in overwatch laid down heavy suppression fire, and the surviving suits that were in the hole took cover and then maneuvered to try and get a better angle on the enemy.

  It was hard for the limited video sensors on my roach to get much detail, but from the occasional glimpse it looked like the enemy consisted of fairly conventional combat remotes: blocky armored bodies, and four heavy legs ending in large rubber pads that could transform into grippers. I counted maybe a dozen – ish – but they were each more than a match for any one armored suit.

  Captain Brendan and two of his heavy troopers had made it onto the first level of the walkway, when they blasted it out from under their own feet. They fell to the next level in a shower of debris. They landed heavily, denting the walkway, and then they blew that level out from under themselves as well. That put them in perfect position to take out a group of the enemy that had previously been below them and to one side – a very nifty maneuver. I think I was a little jealous.

  I tried to move my roach just a little closer to the lip of the hole to get a better view, and that was a mistake. Three heavy seeker grenades popped up and headed my way. I gunned the engine in reverse but too little too late. Sergeant Wolfram shot one of the grenades before it got me, but the other two impacted and my world was turned upside down and my systems went offline.

  By the time I had rebooted, Sergeant Wolfram was dragging my android body from the wreckage of my roach. I did a status check: two of my repair drones had also survived, and I ordered them to scramble out of the wreck after me.

  We should get well clear, sergeant. The fuel cells are still nearly full.

  “Acknowledged,” said the Sergeant. Then he stopped. “I have an idea.”

  He called over five of his fellows, and together they pushed the wreck of the roach over the edge of the hole. “Incoming!” transmitted the sergeant.

  The wreck tumbled out of sight, and after a couple of seconds delay, the entire circular pit was lit up with a brilliant flash. The enemy fire from below tapered off.

  “We have them on the back foot!” transmitted General Trellen. “Beta and Gamma squads, forwards, the rest suppressive fire!”

  Unfortunately I no longer had a view of the proceedings, but it sounded like the suits had things well in hand.

  “Are you all right?” asked Sergeant Wolfram.

  Nominally. Although I no longer have a transport.

  The sergeant nodded. “Then I shall carry you.” He hauled me up and slung me over his back, and proceeded to move me farther away from the hole.

  We are leaving?

  “No,” said the sergeant. “But the general is cross with me for letting you stay exposed. We are taking cover until the current engagement is over.”

  Well, I would have dearly loved to have seen more of the battle, but I could not fault his logic. The sergeant and my android body and two repair drones hid behind a low rock formation. I listened in on the general tactical channel, and it seemed as if the suits were winning handily. Unfortunately the last enemy unit had proved especially bothersome – it had found a place near the bottom of the pit where it could shift position and had nearly optimal fire fields. It cost the lives of three more suits before it got taken out, and then the skirmish was over.

  Sergeant Wolfram slung me onto his back again.

  Where are we going?

  “The General called me. The immediate danger is over, and he says that he needs you. Something about a gate.”

  The sergeant picked his way carefully though the rubble – many of the walkways and staircases lining the pit had been blasted to ruin or teetered at odd angles, but enough had survived the firefight that we made it to the bottom. My two drones padded along after us like dogs. I noticed a large number of dead suits, and random armored fingers and hands and legs. I wondered how many we had lost – 50? 60? I mean, in combat you lose assets, that’s the game, but we didn’t have that many assets to lose. As Pyrrhus once said, a few more ‘victories’ like this one and there would be none of us left.

  The bottom of the pit was 300 meters down – it had looked even deeper before it was lit up. The floor must have been smooth, but now was so tangled with wreckage that it was difficult to pick through it. Captain Brendan was standing guard in the middle; he was undamaged although scorched, and his armor still glowed red-hot in places. I took the opportunity to take a close look at the walls.

  Now the first rule of dealing with aliens is that they are alien. Sometimes an alien construct will be a simple geometric shape – a sphere, a cube, a cylinder – these look the same no matter what civilization creates them. Sometimes they will try and mimic the human style, and a technically savvy culture can come up with some very good fakery although there are usually some minor details to give it away if you know what to look for. But most of the time, something built by aliens is immediately obvious – the proportions are wrong, the colors don’t match, everything from the textures to the fastening systems just screams wrong.

  But not this place. The walls were polished metal, bronze, and pewter, with inset panels of a stone that resembled marble. It was quite pretty, in an art-deco kind of way, and it did not look alien in the slightest. If this was mis-direction, it was of a very high order.

  I saw General Trellen making his way through the rubble from the other side of the pit. He still carried the banner of The Fortress in his left hand. He stopped to talk with a suit that had had his left arm blown off, telling him that he was proud of him, and that he s
hould take up a rearguard position until he could be properly repaired. The injured suit saluted with his remaining arm and headed back up out of the pit.

  Hello General. A hard fought action.

  “Hard fought indeed,” said the general. He pointed off to one side. “Do you have any opinions on that?”

  I followed the general’s arm, and saw a door in the wall of the pit. It was about four meters by four meters square, and inset in a stubby hallway so that you couldn’t see it from the top levels. It was covered with intricate arabesques of lapis lazuli and ivory. It held my gaze so strongly that for a moment I suspected an embedded toxic visual meme, although my signals warfare systems gave it the all clear.

  I have no idea what this is. It is certainly elegant, and it doesn’t look alien.

  “Do you think we should open it?”

  Having fought this far to get here, it would seem a shame not to. And it’s not like we have anything else on the calendar.

  Trellen laughed at that. “No indeed. See anything that looks like a lock?”

  I examined the door carefully. I instructed my two repair drones to assist – their scanning ability is limited but they do have some metallurgical and e-field sensors that complement my own currently modest abilities.

  If there is a lock, it’s well hidden. I don’t see any obvious means of opening it.

  “I do,” said Captain Brendan. He raised his heavy plasma cannon. “May I?”

  “By all means, captain,” said Trellen. “You may fire at your convenience.”

  I turned and ducked to protect my non-military grade optics. When Brendan stopped firing, I stood up and checked – and the door was still intact. It wasn’t even singed.

  “Tough door,” said Brendan.

  “Indeed,” said General Trellen. “It would be simpler to look for another target, but a door this well armored seems likely to be hiding something important…”

  Unless it’s misdirection.

  “There is that,” admitted Trellen, “but there are no other obvious leads.”

  You have no records of anything like this? A lost human colony, like your lesser redoubt? Fairy tales, legends, ghost stories? I mean, there is a reason you took us here in the first place, right?