by Marc Stevens
“No, save them, we may need them later.”
The beast in me was crawling out of his cage. The Operative backed away from me and I could see the apprehension on Tria’s face.
“No Nathan, you must control the rage!”
The fear in Tria’s voice brought back some of my coherent reasoning. I ground out a reply.
“GO! I will catch up with you.”
The Operative grabbed Tria by the arms and they boosted down the passageway away from me. I turned back to face the coming onslaught and raised my launcher. Anti-matter appeared in my visor and I dialed it up to full yield. The weapons release code changed from green to orange. The aliens were moving faster now but it would not matter. I fired the round and boosted hard after Tria and the Operative. I could see my crew huddled in the distance. They were at a junction in the corridor. Everything whited out in a blinding flash that was accompanied by an insanely loud metallic clang. The shockwave traveled up the hallway at supersonic velocities, dislodging hundreds of years of dust and debris. I was flipped over by the turbulence and driven into the deck. I rolled several times then got back up and boosted through the filthy dust cloud to my crew. They decided to ride out the shockwave prone on the deck. I landed next to them and they got to their feet. I could see their faces and the looks of concern were obvious. The Operative stood well away from me with two of her hands on her pistols. My crew was probably wondering why Justice would give a proven psychopath anti-matter rounds.
Klutch finally broke the silence. “Commander, we have found an access tunnel to the upper decks!”
That seemed to snap me out of my daze. “Lead the way, Troop Master.”
We used our gravity boosters to put some distance between us and the passageway. Klutch led us to a large, capsule-shaped hole in the wall that was at least fifty feet wide. We landed and I peeked into it. It went a long way down and a long way up. If I had to guess I would say it was an inoperable gravity lift tube. The beast in me wanted to send some of my hate up and down tube to see what would shake loose. I stifled the thought with a deep breath and gritted teeth. I wasn’t sure if Justice regretted giving me our most destructive ordnance, but he did give me a warning.
“Commander, the already fragile superstructure of the derelict ship has been further compromised by your weapons release. Additional anti-matter discharges may sever the aft section of the ship in the location the Legacy is sheltered in.”
OK, I got that part and would heed his warnings, but that didn’t mean I planned to save my heavy ordnance for a rainy day either.
“Did I manage to thin the herd?”
“Yes, by more than five hundred, but I have detected six large heat signatures that do not match existing sources. They are on the deck above you.”
“Are they moving?”
“Yes, they are advancing on your position.”
Coonts was guarding our rear and broadcast a warning.
“Commander, Klutch and I mined the corridor we searched. The munitions are detonating. We cannot remain here much longer.”
“Klutch take us up, but don’t stop on the deck above us. Go until we have to stop!”
“Roger that. Justice has warned us. Follow me and stay to the sides of the deck openings. We do not want to be exposed to any direct fire.”
Klutch and Coonts stepped into the opening and went left and up. The Operative looked back at me and promptly joined them. Tria and I went up the opposite side, keeping pace with them. We cautiously bypassed three more openings leaving a parting gift hovering outside of each as we moved on. We were left with two choices when the tube terminated: go out or go back. I usually never used the second option.
“Justice, do you have any movement on our level?”
“Justice?”
I heard my crew trying to raise the Legacy as well, we were getting nothing, I tried my IST and the Backscatter transmitter and still nothing. I thought for sure those devices would work, but I got no response. Sael hissed the most obvious conclusions over our comms. She didn’t sound like her normal unflappable self during combat situations.
“We are encountering advanced shielding or possibly jamming. There is one other scenario I do not care to voice.”
I wanted to tell her not to worry, that we had been down this road before, but I couldn’t in all honesty say it at the moment. In the past we always had a Legacy to return to, but this wasn’t the past and presently I could only speculate why we couldn’t make use of our multiple communications capabilities. The thought of being marooned on this wreck was terrifying and was encroaching on the fringes of my mind. I could almost hear the Oolaran soldier in me laughing at my worry — it was immune to such frailties.
I was startled back to reality by the grenades below us detonating, creating a strobe-like effect on our end. We made the judicious decision to unass the tube. We found ourselves standing in the edge of a huge room full of large pieces of unidentified machinery and equipment. Before we moved away from the opening, Tria stuck her arms back in and launched a twenty-round burst of high explosive down at any would be pursuers. Coonts was still on the comms trying to raise Justice, but to no avail. Klutch and the Operative had their weapons out and ready. They were moving from cover to cover trying to establish whether or not we were alone. I took a grenade and tossed it into the top of the tube as a tripwire to alert us to any unexpected company.
Tria, Coonts and I unclipped our weapons and started making our way quietly around the edge of the room. Coonts alerted me to the fact that this room had a constant gravity of almost three as compared to the one G that the other decks registered. The powered exoskeletons of our armor didn’t even register it as an inconvenience. He also said there was an atmosphere in here that had very little oxygen and an abnormally large amount of nitrogen and ozone. There was no point in asking what that meant because I did not need a thirty-minute oration on what his thoughts on the subject might be.
The Operative commed me and she sounded excited. “Nathan, you need to look at what we have discovered.”
Using the cues in our helmets Tria, Coonts and I quickly made our way over to Sael and Klutch. They were standing near a huge domed piece of equipment that reminded me a lot of the early warning radar domes I had once seen while flying along the coast of Alaska with my friend Karl.
“What have you got, Sael?”
“If this is operational and we manage to get out of here alive, you no longer have to look for the power source for your anomaly weapon!”
“How would you know what an Oolaran weapons power plant looks like?”
“Because a Chaalt transporter power source is reverse-engineered from this design.”
“If you already have the designs, why didn’t you make the weapon operational?”
“Because we don’t have a Justice to control the anomaly. Our initial experiments resulted in a disastrous accident that cost the lives of a great many people.”
Coonts was examining the power plant and voiced the question on my mind.
“I wonder how it ended up in here?”
Before we could further contemplate the discovery, the bizarre electrical current we saw coming out of the passageway below us, started snaking around our feet and arcing to our armor. We were assaulted once again by the loud blaring torrent of languages. They translated to more of the same bullshit.
“SUBMIT TO THE WILL OF YOUR MASTER OR BE CONSUMED AND NEVER RISE.”
I pretty much had my fill and was going to spout some drivel of my own when the grenade I left in the tube started spitting fragments. We cloaked and ran back toward the opening. We spread out behind the pieces of equipment waiting to see what would come out. The current arcing around us stopped but started going crazy somewhere in the tube below us. The glow was getting brighter by the second. My armor’s subsystem alerted me the lift tube was now functioning.
The Oolaran in me was not a patient entity, so I held up a grenade so everybody would notice. I threw it at the opening an
d it came to a hover just above it. Not to be outdone my crewmates did the same. I got a piercing stare from the Operative because she was fresh out. A mass of aliens boiled up to the edge of the opening. The protrusions sticking out of their bodies were alive with the inexplicable electrical discharge flaring from all around the tube. A large number were carrying a stubby barreled weapon with a spike sticking out of the end. They never got a chance to show us how they worked; our grenades filled the opening with exploding shrapnel.
The beast spun up my minigun and a red circle appeared searching for anything that might make it out of the entrance alive. My crew did the same and gave anything moving in front of us a short burst, blowing them to pieces. Tria was launching single rounds of high explosive into the shaft whenever there was a lull in the outpouring masses. It was a horrific sight to see the eviscerated bodies being forced up and out of the opening like lava flowing from a volcano. The ground up remains were being pushed all the way to our positions, forcing us to retreat back away from the morbid mess. Whoever was in charge was pulling out all the stops trying to overwhelm us.
The aliens had jerky, almost mechanical movements leading us to believe they were being remotely manipulated. They were trying to level their weapons at us as they came out of the tube, but we were gunning them down before they could accurately engage us. Many started firing even before they left the tube, in some cases gunning down the aliens in front of them. I tossed another grenade, only leaving me with five. It would have been wise to hang on to some of them, but the Oolaran soldier in me pulled rank and tossed one after another until they were gone. Coonts became emboldened by the opposition’s piss poor accuracy, stepped into the open and gave them hell with his minigun until it ran dry. The firehose stream of exploding slugs only slightly slowed the boiling sea of alien cyborgs. Tria opened fire with all four launcher tubes. The anti-personnel munitions ground down the bodies till they flowed like a mud filled river, inundating our positions until we were forced to retreat once again through the knee-deep carnage. We now had so much gore splattered on us, our cloaking capability was severely degraded. The whole room was glowing brightly from the static discharge until it stopped as suddenly as it started. The aliens literally fell back down the tube, disappearing somewhere below.
The beast half of me felt disappointment, but my rational half felt elated. At this insane attrition rate, the fool that had declared himself our master had to be running low on cannon fodder. That thought lasted maybe two seconds because large metallic hands with six spiked fingers gripped the edges of the tube opening. My eyes grew wide as recognition settled into my brain. A Prule Hunter pulled itself into the room.
We opened fire on the metallic monster but a pale green bubble flared out in front of it and our rounds harmlessly exploded or were deflected away. Evidently our cloaking was no longer effective because the machine came right at us. It moved incredibly fast and was amongst us in a blink of an eye. It whipped one of its lower arms out, smashing Sael in the side, sending her flying. Klutch and Coonts ducked under a swing that crushed the side of the machinery they were sheltering behind. The rope-like appendage sticking out from its upper body started glowing and it lashed out at me. I trying to follow my crew’s example but ducked late. The glowing cord wrapped around my upper body. I was jerked off the floor like I weighed nothing and smashed into the ceiling, then the floor. My vision blurred from the impacts. My armor’s subsystem called out a warning that the Prule was trying to overwhelm my operating systems. The Guardian firewalls were holding, but none of us had any idea how long they were capable of doing so.
I caught a glimpse of Tria as I was pulled toward the ceiling once more. She was pouring a barrage of armor piercing rounds into the lower portion of the Prule’s shield. Just before I was whipsawed around and hurled into Klutch I thought I saw sparks flying from its legs. My vision cleared and I rolled off Klutch to my knees. I saw the Prule raise an appendage with a device on it. What I thought might be a tool flared on the end and lightening like bolt flashed from it striking Tria dead center. She was blown across the room by thunderous explosion. I screamed out her name but got no answer.
The beast in me raged and I threw my arm up and gave the Prule a beam shot from about forty feet. The energy release flattened me and sent a hurricane of body parts flying in all directions. The green bubble in front of the Prule flared a blinding white and disappeared, knocking the creature to the floor. It let out a warbling screech and tried to point its weapon at me. I was surprised to see the weapon explode leaving a ragged stump where it was once mounted. I glanced to my right and saw Sael fire another volley from her pistols collapsing one of the Prule’s legs. The creature ducked behind a piece of equipment before I could re-engage it. Coonts and Klutch were still trying to regain their senses from the beam shot. They were crawling through the grotesque collection of ground up body parts. I could not locate Tria and she still would not answer my desperate shouts.
The beast in me must have felt I had rested long enough and forced me to my feet, my burning anger and hate for the loathsome machine egging me on. I stalked after the wounded Prule with the deadliest of intentions. I saw the glow of its power whip before I actually saw it coming. I extended my climbing hooks and shielded my face as it came swinging around for a head strike. There was a flare of bright sparks as the bludgeon cord broke one of my hooks and severed. I staggered backwards from the blow but kept my footing. I was being driven forward by sheer will and a thirst for revenge. I could see the monstrosity scurrying to the back of the room flailing its severed whip and dragging a shattered mechanical leg. We once again heard the blaring loud cacophony of languages, and now they were singing a different tune.
“YOU ARE THE MINIONS OF THE ANCIENT ENEMY! YOU MUST BE STERILIZED!”
A bright beam flashed from somewhere in the back of the room connecting with the Prule. The upper half of its capsule-shaped body burst open in a shower of molten metal. The remains of the machine were brutally smashed into a wall where it collapsed and did not move. I could not think of a more fitting way to shut up that wretched warbling noise the oversized blender was emitting. I was stunned by the shockwave of the beam blast and when I fully regained my senses, I heard Tria shouting my name over our secure comms channel. Her voice was like a cool calming breeze to my heat-driven rage. I saw her stagger around the side of a piece of machinery and all thoughts of the beast were gone. I ran to her and held her in my arms. The front of her armor was crushed inward and burnt down to the inner liner. I could only think of evacuating her out of this hell hole, but she held up a hand.
“Nathan, the air was forced from my lungs by the creature’s weapon strike and I was unable to speak. The weapon depleted its energy on my outer armor and did not penetrate my nanite reservoir. As long as the reservoir and my inner armor remain intact, I am still combat effective.”
I was going to voice my doubts but was interrupted by a warning from the Operative.
“NATHAN, ANOTHER PRULE IS EXITING THE LIFT TUBE!”
I had forgotten all about the nanites we carried in our heat sink reservoirs and the menu appeared in my visor. One simply said, “attack mode.” I selected it and a target designator appeared on my HUD. I threw my arm up and a high-pressure nozzle extended from the top of my hand. The Prule was moving incredibly fast and leaped to the side before Tria could hit it with a beam shot. I was trying to get the nanite weapon to discharge when the word “Hold” flashed in front of my face.
Coonts and Klutch were covering our backs and were used to the fact that our troubles always came in multiples. They were blowing the hell out of everything trying to hit the Prule Hunter with simultaneous double taps from their beam weapons. The machine was making insane leaps back and forth behind pieces of equipment firing its energy weapon at us. We were maneuvering equally as hard to avoid being struck.
A great number of the artifacts closest to the lift tube were now useless piles of slag. Coonts or Klutch made a lucky hit on the
Prule’s shield. It flared and disappeared, staggering the machine and driving it into the deck, but it quickly righted itself and loosed a barrage that sent all of us scurrying for cover. Tria was pulling me along with her and I finally noticed my HUD was blinking back in attack mode. I lurched away from her toward the machines position. My crew was yelling for me to stop and the beast was ignoring them. I ran around the side of a piece of machinery and ducked under the flailing blow of the machine’s bludgeon whip. I fired the nanite weapon and was shocked that it only fired a fist sized gray glob onto the machines armor. The Prule thanked me by savagely smashing me to the floor and trying to drive one of its ice pick appendages through my armor. I was too close for my crew to engage it with their beam weapons. They were yelling out my name and unleashing a firestorm of anti-personnel rounds at the machine, the shrapnel sounded like a hail storm on my armor. The Prule Hunter was forced to retreat.
I shook my head to clear it and got up on all fours and crawled as fast as I could through the carnage around me. I rounded the corner on one of large machine pedestals and came visor to visor with the Operative. She struck me a proper blow to the side of my helmet with one of her fist.
“YOU PRIMATE! IF YOU PULL SOME SCAT LIKE THAT AGAIN, I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF!”
Tria came crashing into us as she leaped behind our cover. She was not happy! I was going to let her know that I was not harmed but she cracked me upside the head.
“NATHAN! DO NOT LET THE DEMON INSIDE OF YOU THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY!
I was going to explain what I was attempting to do, when we heard the Prule screeching out its high-pitched warbling. We could hear it thrashing about wildly and I was afraid that Klutch was brawling with the machine. We got to our feet and peeked around the pedestal. I could see both Coonts and Klutch just across from us and they were doing the same thing. The crashing noises intensified as well as its warbling screech. We could see ground up body parts and debris being thrown in all directions. We started slowly advancing toward the ruckus with our beam weapons up and ready. All of the sudden the Prule Hunter rolled out of cover thrashing about on the deck. It was smashing its whip and appendages into its own body, then dove toward the lift tube leaving us staring wide eyed in disbelief of what we just witnessed. The machine disappeared down the shattered tube and Klutch stormed forward yelling a warning.
