Asteroid Return: An Arek Lancer Novella

by Troy Osgood

  We knew there were four. Had more shown up? That was the risk.

  I had to remember to keep my mouth shut next time I had a brilliant plan.

  A slow foot by a slow foot I made my way down. The cavity was dark and I had to switch on my helmet’s light. The ducts ran straight, avoiding the corridor, which made some sense. I could hear the noise of blasters, both sides, coming from below.

  Ten feet, twenty feet. Twenty five and I was where I needed to be.

  I hoped.

  I didn’t need to be right on top of the Tiat but I needed to be behind them.

  It was awkward holding the torch with one hand but I needed to be quick. When the piece of the hard ceiling dropped, the Tiat would react. I needed to be quicker. Hitting the activation switch with my left thumb, I held my hand over where the hole was cutting.

  I moved the torch slow, not wanting to make noise or much light. I figured the Tiat weren’t hearing it or they’d be firing into the ceiling. No shots, I had to be safe enough for now.

  Watching the cut line carefully, I followed the bright light as it sliced through the metal of the ceiling. The front got closer to the end and I held my left hand up, just above the soon-to-be-hole. I could feel the heat, even through my gloves.

  There was a snap and the small slightly oblong circle of metal ceiling dropped to the ground. I couldn’t hear the noise it made over the sound of blaster fire and I didn’t hesitate. My left hand lowered, I released the button my thumb was holding down, and the plasma grenade fell through the hole.

  I rolled away from the hole as far as I could.

  The blast was loud, the ceiling beneath me buckling. A great concussive noise and impact. The hole I’d cut enlarged, pieces of ceiling splitting. Cracks formed around me and I could have sworn there was a leaning to the ceiling now. The firing below stopped, that of the Tiat, but the return fire from the 2Es Spec Ops continued. It came closer, the two blasters joined by a third and a fourth.

  Twisting myself around I started working my way back to the hole into the stairwell.

  *****

  The plasma grenade had made a mess of the corridor, all three legs. We’d come onto a straight run out of the stairwell door that ended in a longer ‘T’ intersection. Doors were off all three corridors. The walls had buckled, dented and cracked. There were black burn marks across the smooth and polished metal.

  Four Tiat lay on the ground. Two bore burn marks from the grenade, the other two dead from blaster shots. I recognized the burn mark and hole that 2E rifles made in Tiat bodies.

  Not one of my more marketable skills, recognizing the burn marks left by different weapons.

  Fortin was down one hallway, tight against the wall. Gilbert was down the other.

  Carleton was hobbling in the rear. Treuto and Sweet were clearing rooms with Harrow reviewing the contents behind them.

  None had waited for me to exit the ceiling cavity or offer to help me down.

  I was starting to wonder where the rest of the Tiat were. There had to be more.

  There had to be more soldiers and where were the scientists? Tiat eggheads were almost as dangerous as the soldiers so we had to worry about them as well.

  Were they all holed up somewhere? Had someone called in reinforcements?

  Hopefully the Tiat didn’t keep a capital ship in the system.

  Our scans hadn’t shown anything but there were a lot of places to hide in a solar system, especially a large one, and scanners weren’t all that reliable.

  “Look like offices,” Harrow said. She had a collection of small devices in her hand. They looked like parts to a computer. Data drives? “I can’t read Tiat, can you?” That was directed at me.

  I shook my head. Not a language I had ever bothered to learn.

  No guards had come to bother us yet so Harrow directed Sweet and Treuto to start with the rooms across the hall. That should be the first of the labs, I thought, working the layout in my head. It would make sense that the stairs would lead to the offices first before the labs. One of the halls would lead to facilities like a break room and locker room, maybe a barracks, and the other would lead to the labs.

  50/50 odds either direction.

  Sweet worked the door and it slid open. He entered, followed by Treuto. Looking straight in, we could see they were in a large airlock. The walls were some kind of see-through material. Not glass but the Tiat equivalent. The inner door opened and a cloud of gas or something billowed out the door.

  Everyone held still.

  “Safe,” Sweet called out as his helmet’s system ran a quick biohazard check.

  He stepped into the room along with Treuto. Lights automatically came on. I couldn’t see much but the room looked large.

  “Clear,” Sweet said a couple minutes later. He was still inside the room, Treuto near the door. “Better get in here boss.”

  Harrow walked forward, motioning at me to follow.

  I felt the temperature drop even through my biosuit as we walked through the airlock. That’s what the cloud was, frost as the warmer air met the colder coming from the room. It was freezing in the space.

  It was an operating theater. Examination tables lined the walls, each with a collection of different equipment next to them. There were saws of various sizes and shapes. One had weird tubes connected to a pump. Another group looked like scanners. The sizes and shapes were varied, which made me think they weren’t meant for Tiats.

  Against the back wall were five cubes. Made of that clear material, each was about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. There was a single door leading into each. Harrow was standing in front of the middle one, Sweet walking around and recording everything with his helmet cam. I walked over next to Harrow. I couldn’t see what her expression was but I could imagine because chances are that it matched mine.

  Inside the glass cube was another examination table, this one at an angle. Strapped to the table was a body. Not human but that sized. Green skinned. Male. Naked.

  Dead.

  A Dyer.

  Tubes ran from the Dyer’s arms to machines mounted to the floor.

  “What the hell,” I said.

  Harrow moved left, I moved right.

  The other two glass boxes held a female Thesan and a male Engyn.

  Both were naked with tubes attached to them.

  Both were dead.

  Harrow and Sweet were both at the far end. I headed that way, avoiding looking at the Dyer. I was starting to have an idea of just what was happening in this facility. The next two boxes held a dead and naked Serit and a dead and naked Human.

  “Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” Sweet said. He sounded scared, or at least worried. Which coming from such a big guy was a little disconcerting.

  I shared his worry.

  Harrow looked at me, wanting confirmation but not wanting to say it aloud.

  So I did.

  “They’re developing bioweapons.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Human, Dyer, Thesan, Engyn and a Serit.

  I really wanted it to be the start to a bad joke but it wasn’t.

  My race and the closest allies to our people.

  Basically the Tiat’s biggest enemies.

  *****

  Each of the clear cubes was a lab. Each had their own air supply, I could see the ducts above leading from the ceiling to the cubes. The tables were the same, sized for each race. The banks of monitors and tubes, all the same.

  The occupants were interesting. I mean it made sense that the Tiat would develop a weapon that would only work on their enemies and not their allies. The Tiat really didn’t have allies, just acquaintances, but you still wouldn’t want to kill every race in the galaxy. Just the ones that gave you the hardest time and were the biggest threats to expanding the empire.

  I couldn’t imagine how difficult making such a weapon would be.

  This was the testing chamber. This was where whatever bioweapon they were cooking up was tested.

  Whi
ch meant the actual production lab was elsewhere.

  “Look for anything of value,” Harrow said to Sweet and me. “Computer drives, files, anything.”

  There was a note of anxiety to her voice. She was worried. She had every right to be. We had thought the Tiat were developing some new tech or weapon. It was a weapon, but not the kind we thought. This was epic level scary.

  Disease was the scariest thing in the galaxy. The hardest thing to control as well. There were so many varied beings in the galaxy, with so many different immune systems, that it was very easy to bring a benign virus from one planet to one where it was lethal. Contamination was a real concern at ports.

  Would think that with everyone knowing what a danger it was, there would be more safety measures in place and people would pay attention more. No. That didn’t happen.

  But bioweapons were things that the various species did not mess with. It was hard to believe the Tiat would open that box. Too much risk, everyone knew. No matter how well designed your virus, they were still living things and could adapt and evolve.

  The three of us tore that place apart.

  And found nothing.

  “Time?” I asked.

  “Not enough,” Harrow replied and motioned for us to go.

  Back out in the hall, we regathered and followed Fortin down the left hall. Going for the break room and barracks wouldn’t help us but it was a 50/50 chance either way.

  And we still hadn’t come across more guards. Or the lab techs. Where were they holed up?

  Probably where the good stuff we wanted was.

  *****

  “We need to get going,” Fortin said. He was standing at the corner, leaning against the wall and ready to swing around.

  There was no noise or anything coming from down the new corridor. At least not yet.

  “Not yet,” Harrow said.

  I agreed with Fortin. Time was not on our side and we needed to move. But I agreed with Harrow as well.

  “The boss is right,” I said. “We need to try to find out what they’ve developed.”

  “We need to do it quickly,” he said. “Clock is ticking.”

  I did the quick calculations in my head. Assuming the timer started when Fortin placed the transmitters in the machine room, we had twenty minutes before the bombers got here. Twenty minutes to get through the asteroids.

  “Where were the bombers launching from,” I asked Harrow.

  “Next system over but only a thirty minute hop.”

  I did the math in my head, knowing the others were as well. Thirty minutes from reception of the signal to get from the Jeffern system to Unitouro, twenty minutes to get through the asteroids. I assumed the bombers would have hop coordinates that put them pretty close to the belt. Probably another beacon on the ship we had come in on, acting as a hop satellite.

  So on the low end, fifty minutes. On the high no more than sixty.

  We’d already used up twenty five of those minutes. Halfway to out of time.

  “Right,” Fortin said coming to the same conclusion. “Time to move.”

  He nodded to Gilbert who was in position behind him. Gilbert grabbed a strap on the back of Fortin’s tact vest.

  Leading with his weapon, Fortin turned and leaned out into the corridor. He looked down the hallway, scanning.

  “Pull,” he yelled, depressing the trigger on his blaster.

  Gilbert yanked hard, pulling Fortin away from the corner just as blaster bolts slammed into floor and corner of the wall. Both soldiers slid back and away from the corner. The metal wall panel was heating up from the repeated blaster bolts, burn marks radiating through the material.

  “Four, maybe more beyond the next intersection,” Fortin said. “Doors down the right side, the outside wall. Couple more on the left but further down.”

  I’d always been good at mapping, able to think in 3D and 2D geometry. Lefts, rights, sizes of the rooms. Somehow I could put them together to create a rough layout of a space. The doors on the left would put those rooms past the large examination room. A shared wall.

  Most likely.

  More shots slammed into the corner, the far wall, some getting a better angle and forcing us back from the corner. If I was the Tiat in charge I’d be advancing down the hall under the covering fire. Concentrate the fire along one side of the corridor, advance up the other.

  That’s what I’d do and I really didn’t have the urge to look to see if I was right.

  Looked like Harrow was agreeing with me.

  “Back the other way,” she said with a curse.

  Sweet in the rear became point. With Treuto, they advanced back the way we had come. Fortin and Gilbert stayed behind, covering our backs. Sweet passed the exam room door, where Harrow and I stopped to wait. Carleton was between our position and Sweet, looking back and forth, ready to cover which side would be needed.

  “Contact,” Sweet yelled through the comms and we heard the sound of blasters against metal wall.

  “Dammit,” Harrow said, her eyes on the stairwell that would lead back upstairs and the roof.

  Where we could escape to.

  With mission not fully accomplished.

  And if we left now, before the bombers were close, the Tiat could find the beacons and simply turn them off. We couldn’t retreat. I knew it and Harrow knew it.

  “Inside,” I told her, pointing at the exam room.

  “We’ll be trapped,” she said, looking back into the room.

  “I think we can get out,” I said.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah,” I answered watching as blaster bolts slammed into the walls at either end.

  If we stayed here, we’d be dead. The Tiat would take the corners and then just keep firing down the corridor until we were no more.

  Harrow didn’t want to follow my plan but couldn’t think of anything else. It wasn’t her ego making her hesitate. She would never let her ego get in the way of keeping her men alive or completing the mission. I knew this because I never did. She hesitated because she didn’t like the idea of the unknown.

  “Inside,” she said into the comms.

  I led the way inside, moving quickly towards the back wall in the right corner. I ran my hands over the smooth metal where wall met wall. I tapped on it, hearing the noise. It sounded solid.

  The others followed me in and I could hear our side returning fire. Now that we were inside, we only had to defend the one opening. Glancing back I saw Fortin and Sweet in the airlock, one on each side, firing down the corridors.

  “Well,” Harrow asked eyeing the wall.

  “Need a torch,” I said tracing an outline of a door on the wall.

  “Look around,” Harrow ordered, thinking there had to be something in the room we could use. She had pretty quickly figured out my plan.

  “Doesn’t Sweet have a breacher in his bag of tricks?”

  Harrow cursed, annoyed at not thinking of it herself.

  “Sweet!,” she yelled.

  Gilbert switched positions. The big man ran over to us, saw the wall and reached behind his back. He pulled out a small device that I recognized. It was a newer model of the one I had on board the Nomad’s Wind. Of course it was legal for Sweet to have it. Not legal for me to have it. Which is why I never told anyone I was in possession of a breacher. Or any of the other equipment I had borrowed when I left the 2Es.

  Harrow and I moved aside. He placed the device against the wall. I heard the hum as Sweet traced a large square. He placed the device in the middle of the square and hit a button. It stayed in place. Taking a small controller in hand, we all stepped back. He hit the button, lines of energy coming out of the bottom of the device, sliding along the surface of the wall and outlining the square that Sweet had traced. The lines of energy sparked and snapped, crackling against the wall. Hitting another button, smoke started rising up from the metal as the lines of energy started cutting through the wall. The energy lines were bright, the smoke thick. Within seconds the section of
wall fell to the ground.

  It landed with a loud crash.

  We were immediately through the wall. Harrow led. I followed.

  The new room was an office. A Tiat equivalent of one. There was a piece of furniture that looked like a desk, another that was probably a chair, and some weird abstract sculpture that I think was supposed to be shelves. There was also a door to the hallway.

  This was good news for us. We had chosen the right corridor to go down. The other must have led to the barracks which was not what we wanted.

  And the most important part was that it wasn’t flying open with Tiat swarming into the room. They hadn’t heard the giant section of wall falling.

  Good for us, bad for them.

  With Gilbert and Fortin back in the lab providing covering and distracting fire, the rest of us gathered at the office door. Harrow started ransacking the desk thing and the shelf art. Carleton leaned against the door with Sweet and Treuto ready to burst out. I was to follow them. They would go right, I’d go left. Not what Harrow had told me to do but technically I wasn’t part of her team.

  Carleton hit the pad and the door slid open. Sweet stepped out into the hallway, body looking right towards the corner. He went flying, a body coming in from the left quickly and suddenly. We all heard the impact against the wall.

  The Tiat are tall, the shortest is seven feet, and skinny but they are super dense and strong. Hitting one is like hitting a wall. Being hit by one hurts a lot. I’ve done both and regretted it everytime. Sweet had just been body tackled by a Tiat and slammed into the wall. Even a big guy like him was going to be hurting from that.

  I stepped out to help but immediately had to start firing down the corridor. The Tiat had turned at the noise. They were now trapped between me, and Carleton who swung out into the corridor, and Fortin on the other end. We couldn’t help Sweet who was under the Tiat and unable to move.

  Luckily Treuto was there.

  The Europan stepped into the hall, covering the distance in just a couple steps, and reached down. He grabbed the Tiat by the collar, lifting the heavy alien as if he weighed nothing. I knew Europans were strong, but not this strong. The Tiat reached behind and punched at Treuto, the Europan staggering under the blows, but holding up as there was no real strength behind them because of the angle. A human would have gotten broken bones but Europans seemed to be as tough as Tiat. I heard the sound of Treuto’s climbing claws unsteathing followed by them slamming into the Tiat’s back. There was a scream that turned to a gurgle. The Tiat spit blue blood and sagged, Treuto letting him drop to the ground.