by Aer-ki Jyr
The first of the 12-wheeled trucks pulled in underneath them, with a short gap to the second. When its cab crossed underneath their position David twisted the camera out of alignment and the other two Archons rolled off and onto the top of the cargo canister as it passed by. David waited a few seconds until the second truck disappeared from view and he heard the doors lowering before he slid his legs over the edge of the roof and dropped to the ground, not bothering to use his jump pack.
He landed hard on his feet, but thousands of hours in high gravity training had strengthened his legs to the point where they didn’t buckle, merely dropping him into a recovery crouch before darting underneath the half-lowered door as flashes of pink lit up the interior just before it locked down and cut off the view from the outside.
David pulled out his stun gun from the rack on his back and ran down the gap in between the two trucks just as the driver of the second one was getting out in a panic. The Archon fired his own pink energy blast in a blur that spread out into a cone nearly half a meter wide by the time it hit the driver, dropping him to the ground unconscious as David hopped over him and pulled the door closed so he could pass through the narrow gap between trucks and up to the front where Nathan and Assad were sweeping around from both sides.
The three quickly downed all personnel in the garage and checked them for weapons, finding none.
“Trucks,” David ordered as he moved off into the loading area opposite the doors. In between the two was a large open parking area with hover lifters racked up on the western wall, one of which was already detached and floating knee height above the floor with the handle dragging on the ground next to an unconscious worker.
Further up along that wall was a ramp that led to an elevated walkway that led back into the loading area, with a symmetrical version on the eastern side, no doubt with one being for entry and the other for departure as the offloading crews would cycle through their rounds offloading the cargo into the rooms that David was now about to start checking.
He held his stun gun in his left hand, aware that he only had 11 more shots left before it was drained of charge. The weapon was a power hog and the Archons preferred using stingers, both for the higher number of rounds they could fire and the increased accuracy, for the stun guns’ energy didn’t flow in a packet or streak, nor did it even dissipate like plasma. Instead, the energy constantly wanted to expand, meaning the moment it left the muzzle of the weapon it had a cone-shaped effect that only made it effective at short range.
That energy was itself invisible and the same used in the stingers, but they had a physical object for the energy to cling to and thus could fire at greater ranges. The stun energy was so repulsive upon itself that a second type of energy had to be added to the discharge for it to cling to, which is what gave the weaponsfire the pink flash.
Very few Archons used the weapons, and even the Regulars usually preferred stingers, save for those who had difficulty aiming. The energy-laced paintballs took some skill to operate, which the Archons and many others preferred, while the stun guns’ spraying capability made them more of a rookie weapon. However, there was one major advantage to the weapons aside from the coolness of a pure energy discharge…they didn’t leave behind any trace of weaponsfire.
Plasma weapons left burn marks, as did lachars to a lesser extent. For this mission, Green Team was operating on non-lethal protocols until they understood what the threat level was, which meant either stingers or stun guns, and stingers left behind paint. Star Force didn’t have legal authority to operate inside the United States and most other countries, so this mission had to be covert, leaving behind no direct evidence that could link them to the site.
Hacking into the campus’s systems had told them where the security cameras were, as well as the lack of cameras inside the loading garage, not to mention the blueprints of the facility, including the storage room that David had found previously and was now coming up on down a narrow side hallway.
It was locked, as before, but the Archon pulled out a small object from a pouch on the small of his back and set it over the swipe card slot. A few moments later the door clicked open and David flicked on an interior light, clearly seeing the burn mark on the floor where he had felt it out before. He had a quick look around the room then put his back to the wall and looked out, trying to work through what might have happened and where a plasma-armed individual might have come from.
Stepping back outside there were two doors on either side of the narrow hallway that led to the wider cargo-access tunnel that ran straight into a warehouse. David checked all four doors, finding them unlocked and leading to more small-scale storage, mostly for maintenance and cleaning purposes. Nothing there jumped out at him, so he moved on down the hall and headed left, bringing him to the warehouse area that contained crates of supply in the center with a ring of refrigeration units around the perimeter for the foodstuffs that couldn’t survive room temperature.
“Got something,” Assad reported over the comm.
“What?” David asked as he turned around and hurried back.
“One of these things does not look like the others,” the Archon said in a sarcastic voice as David came back into the garage area and saw both Archon tags located behind the leftmost truck. In fact, one looked to be up inside the back of it.
David ran around the back and hopped up inside while Nathan stayed on the deck below, finding the truck only partially loaded with food supplies…until he leaned against one of the boxes and felt something much heavier inside. He was about to open a box when Assad pointed him towards something over behind the nearest boxes and obscured from direct view.
Peeking up, David saw the top of a large device half buried in boxes.
“Industrial laser,” Assad told him, already having had a closer look. “Not exactly what you need for making breakfast.”
“Aines Corp?”
Assad’s helmeted head paused a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
“It was listed as damaged and scrapped less than a month ago,” David explained. “A lot of things have been going missing from various corporations, and this was one on Davis’s list.”
“Where were they planning to take it?” Nathan asked, still keeping an eye out behind the trucks.
“Either they’re storing it here to transport elsewhere later, or they’ve got subsurface tunnels, and I’d bet on the latter. See what you can find,” David said, then looked at Assad. “You find anything else back there?”
“Only crawled back halfway, and we still have the other truck to look at.”
David pointed him towards the boxes and hopped out the back, heading over to the other truck. He opened it up just in time to have a blue plasma blast rip by over his head.
He ducked down and out of sight on reflex, then came back up and pumped two stun gun shots into the truck without aiming. When his eyes focused enough to spot individuals he pumped another round into the one left standing and held his ground, aiming in at elbow height from the floor of the truck.
A few seconds later the other two Archons came up alongside him and David nodded for Nathan to jump on up while he covered him. The other acolyte’s silver armor levitated its way up with a quick tap of the jump pack all the while holding a stun gun level in the other hand.
“Tangos down,” he reported as he walked in around a few stacks of crates. “I count four,” Nathan said, pulling out the stun stick from the rack on his packless armor’s back and jabbing it into one of the still moving men. He did the same with the others, unsure of how much of a hit they’d taken from David’s weapon.
“They weren’t going into storage,” Assad said, switching to venator and roaming about the garage. The stun guns made enough noise, but not nearly as much as plasma weapons. If someone else was nearby it might have attracted some attention.
“No insignia on the uniforms,” Nathan said as David climbed up into the cargo compartment and stepped over a crate to get to the men. “But this clothin
g is definitely standardized. These men weren’t meant to see daylight.”
“Hello,” Assad said from a few meters outside, his tag visible on David’s HUD through the left side of the truck out into the middle of the clear area in the hangar.
“Whachya got?” Nathan asked, still stooped over and examining the unconscious men.
“Seam in the floor. I think there’s a hidden lift.”
“That would explain the enclosed loading bay,” David said…then another idea struck him. “I need to check something. Grab that plasma and any others they’ve got,” he said, climbing out the back of the truck and heading up the side ramp. He ran back over to the closet, wondering again why someone would have happened onto the pair of love birds with weapon in hand.
When he got inside he began looking around for some type of switch, pulling out and pushing aside boxes, widgets, and any and all things that were packing the shelves…then he dropped to the floor and looked around low, seeing if there wasn’t something they could have accidentally kicked.
And there it was…on the left side, up underneath the bottom shelf set barely high enough to slide your foot under, was a 2 inch wide toe button. David reached his hand under and tapped up on it, assuming it was usually activated by foot…then the whole far wall disconnected from the closet and pulled back a meter revealing a well-lit hallway to the left.
“Son of a bitch,” David whispered as he got to his feet. Just then a person appeared in the nook, coming out of the hallway, pistol in holster. As soon as he saw the Archon’s armor he drew his weapon but David was faster, jumping forward and grabbing the man’s wrist as they smashed back into the shelves on the moveable wall. David snaked an arm back and grabbed his stun gun from the rack on his back and tucked it into the man’s side as he tried to wiggle free of the Archon’s iron-tight grip.
A quick shot ended his resistance and David untangled himself enough to stand up, then he saw that two steps down the hallway a sharp and narrow staircase descended around curve, heading further underground…along with a large lever imbedded into the wall.
“Trouble?” Assad asked at hearing the weaponsfire.
“Watch the floor,” David said, then he pulled the lever.
“Bingo,” Assad confirmed as a huge section of floor came up on pylons.
“Found a stairway headed down. You two take the lift, assuming that’s what it is?”
“Cargo lift for sure, judging by the size.”
“I caught a guard coming up, so stay sharp.”
“Copy that,” Nathan confirmed as he came out of the truck and joined Assad as the lift finally finished extending up in two parts. First was the pneumatic lifts pushing the floor section up and out of the way, then came a second floor with a short 3-sided fence outlining the perimeter with a control console in the far back corner. The lift assembly locked into place with a snap/hiss then the pair of Archons stepped inside and toggled the ‘down’ button.
Slowly it descended, first past the garage floor, then down through tens of meters of vertical tunnel until a crack of light showed at their feet along with the sound of plasma fire.
Nathan fell to his belly, aiming his weapon through the growing gap just in time to see David pistol whip an opponent off his feet then fire a pink stun blast off at someone else out of view. As he searched for a target to shoot Assad ran forward and slid out of the now two foot gap face first and fell into the large open cavern on his head, rolled into a crude somersault, and came up firing at a pair of uniformed guards, both of which were aiming at David.
Within a few seconds all of the enemy were down and Nathan picked himself up and jumped off the lift before it locked down into place, leaving the threesome in the middle of a high-ceilinged chamber with the far wall open to natural rock that was unlit.
David kicked aside one of the knockoff plasma pistols and walked out onto a rectangular dock reaching into the rocky end of the chamber, seeing a watery tunnel heading off into blackness. Attached to either side of the dock were three boats, two were small skiffs while the third on the left was a long platform, apparently for moving cargo.
“Impressive setup,” Assad commented, walking up beside David and looking down the dark tunnel. “That looks natural.”
“All the better to hide it from geological scans. Looks like Davis was right about them having a hidden base.”
“Press on or tidy up?” Nathan asked.
“These guys are good at covering their tracks, so let’s probe as far as we can while we’ve got them off guard.”
“I’m down with that,” Assad said, reattaching his pistol to his armor rack and hopping onto one of the skiffs. Nathan followed him, leaving David on the dock until the other Archon got the engine running, then Green Team’s leader hopped on the back of the four person transport as it pulled out and around the end and slowly motored off down the tunnel under the glare of four bright spotlights on the arch overtop the skiff.
A few moments later the dock area was silent, exposed to the surface via the lift and the staircase, with numerous unconscious bodies up top and below for any 4 am maintenance worker or security guard to stumble across.
6
The underground waterway was mostly natural, but David could see bits here and there where it’d been hollowed out wide enough to allow for easier passage. Multiple loops and switchbacks made their route seem erratic, but as they progressed the Archon’s armor created/updated their battlemap with an exactly record of their travels, which was showing a gradual progression to the southwest.
There were also sporadic hollowed-out turnarounds where opposing traffic could slide off to let others pass by, suggesting that this tunnel saw a fair amount of traffic, yet the Archons came across none as they zigzagged their way through the claustrophobic tunnel for more than 2 hours. Eventually the rough rock ceiling smoothed out into concrete and they found themselves in a spur with four opposing tunnels and an exit on the right side that led to a large underground lagoon.
Assad flipped the lights off and brought the motor down to a minimum crawl as they looked out across the dozens of small watercraft docked against a very manmade structure. Gone was the natural rock, with the ceiling being comprised of flat, solid lines and the perimeter of the loading area lit by small lights in what appeared to be standby mode for the larger ones above that were currently deactivated.
“Bring us in,” David said over the comm, and Assad trolled them out of the spur and across the lagoon.
“Two doors,” Nathan noted as they approached. “No guards.”
“You take right,” he said, pulling out his stun stick and flicking it on. David’s stun gun was out of shots and hanging uselessly on his armor next to another, along with a stun rifle that held 52 rounds, but that was the full extent of his ammunition. The stun stick had hundreds of hits in it, making it by far his most useful weapon…if they were fighting in close.
“Neutralize tangos on contact,” he continued as the skiff nudged up against the dock and he and Nathan jumped up and off onto a clear section of the platform. “Keep them off the comms.”
Nathan ran across to the rightmost doorway and ducked inside, wielding his stun stick in his left hand and a stun gun in his right. His door was only man-sized while the other was built wide for cargo passage. Befitting its smaller nature, inside and to the right he found another circular staircase that led up, which he took to two steps at a time.
Meanwhile David headed for the cargo door, pausing long enough at the entrance for a look inside and so Assad could catch up behind him. There was a short tunnel that connected to a cross hallway with a large lift on the opposite side. He signaled for Assad to head right down the tunnel while he took left and the Archons split.
David immediately came up on a small room with a man inside to his left, prompting him to skid to a halt and jump inside, jabbing the man into unconsciousness before he could properly react. A quick look around the room suggested that it was a quartermaster’s station, inside
of which there was a schematic of the cargo areas and the transport lines coming from nearby production areas.
The facility was huge, and David guessed there was probably more to it than was showing here, given that there weren’t any residential or service areas marked, just industrial ones. Not wanting to linger he ran back outside and continued down the hallway just as a loud and ominous alarm sounded.
“Sorry guys,” Nathan said amidst the sound of plasma fire. “That was me. Ran into a nest of them…and more are pouring out from everywhere, but not all are armed.”
“Take them all down,” David said as a couple of people popped out of nearby rooms in front of him. He sprinted ahead and wacked one across the forehead with a halfhearted tap of his stun stick as he passed by, then he chased the other back into the room she’d come out of and poked her in the thigh as she panickly jumped across a table trying to get out of reach.
“Security teams coming down from above,” Assad reported. “All with plasma pistols and shields.”
David ran down the hallway and into one of the cargo areas, then sprinted down the side wall until he came to a door that the schematic had said led into a factory area. As soon as he was inside he ran into workers moving about everywhere, some running for cover and others not knowing where to go or what to do.
The Archon took after them indiscriminately, slapping and poking them with his stun stick as rapidly as possible and littering the floor with bodies as he worked his way around the largely mechanized assembly line that appeared to be making rifles. Of what kind David didn’t know, for there were so many people running about that he had his hands full containing and stunning them all.
When he got through most of them he began tracking down the fleers, following them into other compartments until a security detail finally got to him and they had a brief shootout. David pulled out his stun rifle and went to work on the soldiers, knowing better than to let multiple plasma-wielding shooters take him on while he tried to close to melee range. He had to time his shots well to get them past the guards’ shields, but the spraying effect of the energy weapons usually hit some part of their bodies, disabling them enough for a second shot to down them completely.
