Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  Always mindful of her spacing, Standish kept a full five metres to the rear of Mils and slightly offset. She knew that if there was enemy contact, the pair didn’t want to get taken out by the same blast of weapons fire.

  Looking around the space, she could tell that there were no lights on. Her helmets enhanced optics providing visuals in several spectrums without the need for natural or artificial lights. If needed, her helmet did have forward-facing conventional and infrared lighting if the circumstances dictated.

  Moving swiftly, the two covered the fifty metres to the sidewall in good time, but not at a reckless pace. The soles of their boots making no noise on the hard metal flooring. Their suits producing not more than a whisper as the powered armoured moved along.

  Reaching the far aisle, Mils took a knee behind the last crate, his rifle pointing down the one-hundred metre straight that lay ahead of them. Standish stacked up behind him, putting her left hand on his shoulder to alert him to her presence, all the while keeping the barrel of her weapon pointed downrange, ready to engage anything that might be a threat. But it was clear to her, and everyone else, that there wasn’t a thing moving in the chamber. Not even a service droid.

  “I thought the facility was still active.” Standish asked over the net in a low whisper.

  “Focus on the clearing this level.” Cryne instructed.

  Once Standish and Mils had given each other sufficient time to scan the aisle, and with both their drones sending them imagery, Mils got to his feet and started moving down the middle of the three-metre-wide runway, Standish one metre to his right, and two metres to his rear. Both operators had a clear shot directly to their front, able to engage hostiles without worrying about hitting each other.

  They moved forward swiftly. The stack of crates on their left had no break in it. The large boxes were shoved right up against each other. The only possible threat could emerge from their front, or from over the top of the crates, and in good time, they reached the end of the aisle and took up defensive positions facing a giant door that led to the shaft that went down towards the mine.

  Checking the trackers, Standish could tell that they were the last pair to arrive, but she knew that this wasn’t a race. After Mils and Standish had set security, Cryne got back on the net. “Mils and Standish, move forward and call the lift. When it arrives, send your drones down.”

  Without needing to speak, the pair rose to their feet and moved towards the door that was at the end of the massive chamber, and signalled the lift. Backing away from the doors, they wanted to make sure that if there was a threat emerging from the depths, they were ready to meet it, but alas, the lift was empty when it arrived.

  The two drones zipped into the lift, and while Standish covered him, Mils moved forward and sent the elevator heading back down to the processing levels.

  “My feed is breaking up.” Standish said.

  The drones couldn’t have been that far away. What the heck?

  “Ditto.” Mils confirmed.

  “Are you still tracking them?” Cryne asked.

  “I’m not receiving any feed.” Standish replied.

  Now she was starting to get nervous. Something was wrong.

  “Then we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.” Cryne said, getting to his feet. “Mils, get up there and call the lift again, both of them.” Cryne ordered. “Prepare for possible contact.”

  Mils did as he was instructed, and then the six waited, weapons trained on the two lift doors that showed no indication of which level they were on, or when they’d arrive. When they did, both doors slid open quickly to reveal two slightly different lifts. One used to transport the refined ore, and considerably larger than the second lift which was used as a service lift.

  “Standish and Mils, take the service lift. Everyone else with me.” Cryne started moving to the large utility lift, checking that is was empty before entering. “If we lose comms, push out to the closest spot to defend from the lift and wait.”

  “Understood.” Mils replied.

  Standish followed her hulking colleague into the lift and realised that both drones weren’t there. They must have exited at the bottom, she thought to herself. The lift itself was only two metres square, and Mils automatically took up a kneeling firing position facing the door when he entered. Standish took up an identical position behind him to his left, her left elbow balancing on the top of her left knee. While she didn’t need to adopt a traditional firing position in the armour due to its unique stabilisation capabilities, she had been taught at every school she had attended that when possible, do it by the book.

  Getting all her sensory information through her heads-up-display was never something Standish was a massive fan of, so when the lift doors shut, she briefly flipped up her blast shield and confirmed that they were in a completely blacked out lift. It was descending silently towards some unknown mineral processing plant in a system that was completely uninhabited. What could go wrong, she thought to herself.

  Flipping her blast shield back down, she switched her selector switch on her weapon from single shot, to fully automatic energy and ballistic rounds. If there were close contact at the bottom of the shaft they were dropping in, she wouldn’t have time to faff around with energy fire for armour or ballistic rounds to energy shields. She would have to open fire with her full arsenal and hope that she wasn’t cut down instantly.

  As the lift continued to drop, Standish could feel it slow, and as it came to a stop, she tightened her grip on her weapon and got ready to make war on anyone foolish enough to test her, but again, there was nothing but silence once the doors opened fully.

  Moving forward, Mils and Standish stayed low as they manoeuvred themselves to the end of the very short hallway that led away from the lifts, and took up firing positions and waited for the other four operators to join them. It gave Standish time to take in her surroundings, and one of the first things she noted was that her drone was nowhere to be seen. She activated the recall system, but after a few moments waiting, nothing happened.

  Using her rear-facing camera, Standish watched as the second lift arrived, and the other four members of the sweep team piled out, and quickly joined Standish and.

  “This level is droid and drone maintenance.” Cryne said over the comms net, but the transmission came in very scratchy, and that gave everyone pause. “Check your equipment.” He ordered.

  Standish quickly ran a full systems check, and everything internal to the suit was working, she just had limited capability to send and receive data from other suits. When Cryne asked for feedback, that was the summary he got from everyone.

  “Since we can’t communicate, and our team trackers are down, we still need to know where each other is at all times, front infrared torches on.”

  It was a command that Standish knew was being given against his better judgement, but she also knew that if the comms systems were down, and the trackers were down, it would be impossible to find anyone in such a large facility, in the dark. Hopefully, if there was an enemy force on the level, they didn’t have optics to see the infrared illumination.

  “There is a single access point on this level to the other levels. The ore is brought up that way, along with all traffic of robots and any maintenance personnel that might ever come along. It’s located in the right-hand corner.” He pointed his arm directly to his right. “Sweep this level with your mate.” Cryne checked his forearm datapad. “Give it thirty minutes, but be at the lift no later than thirty minutes.”

  Everyone signalled Cryne that they were ready, and without further instruction, Mils and Standish stood up, and with their infrared head torches now illuminating everything to their front, peeled off to the left, along the wall, in search of something of interest. Standish had a suspicion in the back of her mind that there was something on this level that had done sabotaged her drone. There was no other reason that she could think of for why it went offline. Time to find it or the source of the disruption.

 
The processing level was comprised of a series of rooms and hallways that all surrounded a massive chamber where all the droids and drones for the mining operation were kept, but before Standish and Mils could get there, they had to clear a series of offices that had been built for an organic management force that appeared to never have existed.

  Each time the duo came up to a door, closed or open, they would stack up, Mils on point, then move smoothly into the room, taking up firing positions just inside the door, sweeping the room for any threats. The infrared torches on their helmets lit the rooms up in a bright green that might not have offered the best clarity of all the optical options available, but it was good enough to give the operator a sense of what was going on in the room.

  All the rooms they swept were elementary and without adjoining spaces, which meant it took less than a minute to clear each room. After all the chambers were cleared in their sector of responsibility, the pair reached a large set of doors.

  “Primary maintenance hall should be on the other side.” Mils said, putting his hand on the door. “On three.”

  Before he could even start his count, the doors slid open quickly to reveal a giant combat droid with a blaster in one hand and a massive cutting tool in the other. Without warning, the machine lunged at Mils, but the operator reacted quickly, and fired off a rapid succession of energy bolts into the machine's torso, cutting clean holes through the robot, forcing it backwards, and after the second volley of fire, the machine tumbled down to the ground.

  “Contact front.” Mils said gently over the comms net, and over his suits external speaker.

  Standish shook her head. “Confirmed.” Her weapon trained on the twitching machine’s head as she stepped into position in front of the open doors while Mils scanned inside the large room.

  “I can see some IR light inside the room.” Mils said, continuing to sweep his rifle barrel across the area to their front. “What do you think?”

  Standish moved towards the downed robot, and quickly pulled the blaster from its metal grip, and used her armoured knee to snap the cutting tool in half. “The rest of the team should have heard or seen the weapons fire.” She got back to her feet. “But we should break tactical silence and warn them anyway.”

  “Contact, contact, contact!” Mils shouted, his suit's speaker booming the warning into the large maintenance facility.

  It didn’t take long for other members of the team to flock over to their position. Ho and Lo arrived first, taking up defensive positions just inside the door facing out. Standish quickly stepped over the downed robot and joined them. Cryne and Has arrived last.

  “Has, join the perimeter.” Cryne ordered as he walked up to Mils. “What do you have here?” He asked, kneeling down over the machine.

  “Unknown.” Mils replied.

  Cryne took a few moments to look the machine over. “I’ve seen this model before, Rigel Axion make.” He made sure his speaker was loud enough for everyone to hear him. “They’re normally outstanding in combat.” He pulled a vibro-blade out and quickly sliced the head of the machine clean off. “Looks like this one is an older model.” He turned he head over and flipped up a rear access panel. “If I can access the droid’s information circuitry, we might learn how many other droids there may be, and any other valuable intel that’s stored in its systems.”

  With great care, Cryne pulled a fibre-optic cable out of his wrist datapad, and plugged it into the rear of the droids head, and was immediately met with a firewall. “Looks like the machine has been encrypted. My suit should be able to break it.” There was silence for the next two minutes while Cryne’s suit went about trying to hack the droid, while the rest of the team maintained security.

  It allowed Standish to take in the room she currently found herself. She wasn’t able to tell how large it actually was from where she was kneeling, but she could see a variety of droid service bays, and pods that were used as auto-repair units. And while the room was an open layout without any walls, it was still impossible to see all the way across to the far side with all the cables, wires, and other beams that were coming down from the ceiling.

  “I’m in.” Cryne reported. “This droid has been here for months.” He said. “It almost certainly took out your drone, Standish.”

  Well, that was bad luck, she thought to herself.

  “Right. No data on who inserted these droids, but there are nine more droids somewhere in the facility, all armed with a blaster pistol like this one.” Cryne picked up the weapon and scrutinised it. “This is a very old disruptor, high radiation output, probably only suitable for droid use, but ferocious enough to pierce our armour, so don’t let one of these fuckers hit you.” Cryne carefully bent the barrel of the pistol out of shape, then set it down. “If there are nine more droids, we have a serious problem. We don’t have enough forces to secure and sweep at the same time, which means even if we clear a level, it is a possibility that it will not be secure moments later.” He got to his feet and stepped over to where the four other operators had set a perimeter. “We can only be certain that this facility is secure once we junk nine more of these things.”

  “We’re going to stick together as a unit, sweep this level, then sweep the four below until we reach the entrance to the mine. Once we’ve reached that, we’re going to blow it, then get back topside, and blow the shaft that runs from the transport deck. Let whoever owns this joint come back and fix it. Our mission isn’t to safeguard the mine, it’s to find and stop whoever is illegally accessing it.”

  The sweep of the maintenance hall went swiftly and without incident. The team fanned out and ensured that everyone was in view of each other while moving through the facility. They found a host of machines designed to service the droids, drones, robots, machines and whatnot in the facility. Everything was powered off but in working order.

  When the team got back to the landing, they moved to the lift, ready to check the other levels. There wasn’t any discussion required at that point. The six team members got in the elevator, formed a firing line with three operators laying down in the prone, weapons ready, with the remaining three kneeling behind them, all ready to pour fire downrange the minute the lift doors opened. But that was not to be the case on the second of the floors dedicated to servicing the machines that kept the facility running.

  The second of five levels had a similar layout to the first deck, but the machines found on this level were almost exclusively for cleaning the mining equipment which would get filthy throughout a dig. The level was also blacked out, without any power, save for the lift which would have been needed at all times to transport the ore to the transportation docks. And even though the level was deserted, it was in spotless condition, without a spot of dirt or contamination.

  It wasn’t the first time Standish had been in a mine. As she and her teammates continued to sweep the level, she remembered her time as a young girl on Nadolo Prime when the adjacent community had discovered a rich vein of ore in the ground outside their small community. At the time, the planet was managed by a privately-owned subsidiary of some massive company based in the Core, and instead of giving the locals a fair percentage of the find, the company seized the land and used droids to dig, build, and then staff the mine. The locals were paid a pitiful sum to provide menial tasks on the site, and during that time, Standish had gone into the tunnels on school trips. The few mine staff that were there were geologists that had come from off-world, and while they were kind and friendly with the young students, they behaved in a manner that let the locals know that they were their betters.

  By the time Standish left for training in the fleet, the mine was gone, and all that was left was a giant hole in the ground, polluted groundwater, and a community that had the most significant opportunity to have ever dropped in their lap come and go without an ounce of profit. It was one of the reasons Standish’s father had encouraged her to leave Nadolo and seek prospects in the fleet. Once she had that experience, she could get employment in many t
rades on any world in the Empire. But that was a long time ago in a universe that didn’t seem to exist anymore.

  Once Cryne was satisfied that the second level was secure, the team moved back to the lift, and readied themselves for the first of the three levels dedicated to the processing of the ore that was being carved out of the asteroid. Standish knew that the threat of danger would increase the lower they went, closer to the mine itself. The first level was for the careful and clean packaging of the ore, it shouldn’t produce any real risks, but that belief was quickly dispelled the moment the doors of the lift opened on the second level.

  “Contact front!”

  It was a warning called by everyone almost simultaneously. They had been trained to do so on Guhr 8-Nine at the D-O academy, now it was put into practice.

  When the doors of the massive lift opened, it revealed a dimly light chamber that was covered in machines boxing neatly processed clean ore, but what it also showed was four droids just standing post, facing the lift.

  The old expression that her shooting instructor had told them back on Guhr 8-Nine was that those that fire first, often fire last. That was the case here. The six barrels of weapons primed and ready, pointing out of the lift let rip the moment the droids had come into view. The old Rigel Axion machines were no match for a disciplined bunch of fighters. The robots dropped to the ground with a heavy clank and thud.

  “Mils, Standish. Move forward and make sure those bots are down and disable their weapons.” Cryne ordered.

  Standish got up from her prone position, all the while keeping her weapon pointed towards the bots, and waited for Mils to come alongside her. Once they were both set, they slowly moved forward, weapons trained on the downed robots at all times. Standish took the two on the left, crushing the bot’s heads with ease under her boot. Her suit’s power giving her more than enough downforce to drive her heel through the brain box of both machines.