Curtis grimaced at the news. He was particularly worried about the technicians and admin folks in the Raiders’ section of the compound. Hopefully they’d been able to hole up and defend the place.
He nodded to Baker. “Got it. I’m on my way!”
Curtis turned and scuttled back through the ruined corridor to the control room, hoping Ashiz had kept it together and waited for him. As he passed through the doors of the control room, he heard the renewed snapping of laser blasts behind him.
He stood up and began to run as he moved through to the corridor on the far side of the control room. As he neared the end, he saw a terrified Ashiz peek his head around the corner. “Friendlies coming through!” he yelled at the pale-faced apprentice. Ashiz lowered the sidearm he’d been holding in a trembling hand. “Back that way, Sergeant, two rooms down.” He motioned with his free hand back down the hallway.
Curtis reached out and gently took the pistol from the other man, worried that Ashiz was going to shoot him on accident. “Ok, Ashiz, thanks, you lead the way.” The younger tech nodded and started back toward the entrance to the maintenance tunnels. Curtis safed the pistol and slid it into a cargo pocket before following.
The two Raiders passed through what seemed like a utility room of the HQ complex and through a back door Curtis had never noticed before. The shallow, Ksshtah-designed stairs led down in (what else?) a spiral 10 or 12 meters underground. Curtis followed the much shorter Ashiz through the uncomfortably small tunnel, having to duck the whole way because of the low ceilings. They emerged into a wide room with slightly higher ceilings to find Howard and three techs working to clear rubble from one corner.
“How does it look?” Curtis asked the other tech sergeant.
“Not sure yet; it looks like part of the ceiling caved in here and fell onto the enclosure, causing a short to the enclosure itself. For sure, the main power coupling from the reactor needs to be replaced; the insulator is damaged.” Howard motioned to the black burns where electricity had arced across the top of the enclosure. “Hopefully the transformer built into the relay is in good shape, but we don’t know yet. The breaker tripped, so it’s safe to work around now, but we’ll see more when we get the panel opened up.” The five Humans ducked and looked up fearfully at the weakened ceiling as a massive explosion boomed somewhere above them. Dust and small pieces of debris trickled down onto the floor, making an odd musical counterpoint to the explosion.
“Ok, I’ll check out the local control system and get everything reset. You guys get the enclosure open and start working on whatever’s damaged.”
Howard nodded and sent two of the techs over to pull spare relays and computer cards from the storage rack on the other side of the room.
Curtis cycled through menus on the local workstation, getting ready to reset the breaker to the big relay, and shook his head. Somehow his life always seemed to revolve around power relays, all the way back to when he’d worked for old Tech Sergeant Garrett as an apprentice.
He studied the readout on the panel carefully as Howard began replacing components in the relay enclosure. Since the main relay itself combined all the functions of a high-power switch, transformer, and power conditioner, it had better be in good shape, or they were shit out of luck. “Ok, it seems like the breaker caught it early enough, maybe this’ll work.”
“That’s excellent news, Tech Sergeant Adams.” Curtis jerked up in surprise and smacked the top of his head on the low ceiling as the voice spoke to him out of nowhere. “What the hell, Mike!” Curtis yelled at the offending mushroom. “I thought you were going back to the Zone 1 shelter with the wounded?”
“I felt I might be able to assist your team here, Tech Sergeant.”
Curtis rubbed his head, still smarting from the ceiling. “Ok, help Ashiz with that replacement power coupling for the relay; it’s delicate and needs to be installed with the right insulator.” He motioned at the apprentice currently unboxing a spare coupling.
“Of course, Tech Sergeant!” With yet another happy wiggle, the three-legged mushroom trundled off to assist.
Even with his team working as fast as they could, getting all the damaged components replaced took precious minutes. Minutes the Raiders upstairs, fighting for their lives, didn’t have to spare.
Curtis watched Howard swap out the last damaged control card in the enclosure and then slam the cover shut. “All right, we need to get this fired up now!”
“We need to at least run some diagnostics to make sure everything is in good shape first!” Howard argued.
“No time, the diagnostics will take at least half an hour! We either get it going now, or everyone upstairs dies.” Curtis turned toward the control panel, hoping against hope they’d gotten the repairs finished in time.
He’d barely taken two steps when Ashiz, who’d been standing out of the way near the entrance, let out a gut-wrenching scream as Zuul claws opened his back from shoulder to waist. As bright crimson blood splattered the doorway, more Zuul crowded in behind the first, eager to get at the unprepared Humans. Curtis was just as flatfooted as the rest and paid for his lack of caution when agony erupted from his right shoulder. Amid the pain, he caught the distinct smell of burning pork, and was overwhelmingly hungry for a split second.
The laser round sent him stumbling against the wall, but fortunately for everyone, it got him just close enough to the control terminal for the power relay system.
He lunged for the bright green button on the console and felt his fingers just brush against it before the darkness took him.
* * *
A wracking cough jerked Curtis out of a deep, dreamless sleep. He hunched over in the bed, body convulsed by spasms as his lungs tried to clear themselves.
“Easy there, Tech Sergeant Adams. It’ll pass in a few seconds.” Curtis felt a hand on his back, helping hold him upright while he hacked.
When the coughing finally eased, Curtis was able to look around the room with dry, bleary eyes. He had to blink several times to make out the figure of one of the Raiders’ medics, the lithe, dark-haired Maria Gutierrez, standing at his bedside. The ever-competent Hispanic woman had her hair tied up in a bun and looked exhausted, with dark bags under her eyes and rumpled BDUs, as if she’d been up for days.
“Here, let me raise this up a little.” Using controls on the side of the bed, Maria raised it up so Curtis could lean back comfortably.
“Thanks, Maria. Where am I? And what’s going on?” Curtis asked of the medic, his voice raspy and throat on fire from the coughing. Looking around the odd room, he saw few of the features that would be in a Human hospital. The walls were a khaki color, but were definitely not square, and seemed to flow into the floor and ceiling. Soft lighting glowed from sconces mounted high on the wall all around the chamber. The room was shaped like a truncated pie shape, with the door on the short end of the pie slice. In fact, the room looked almost as if it had been grown instead of built.
“We’re in a Ksshtah building, part of our temporary quarters while everything gets rebuilt. The Zuul did a number on our barracks, so the Ksshtah offered us some free space.” The medic clasped his wrist and looked at her watch, taking his pulse. “The colonel asked us to get him as soon as you woke up. You ok here for a minute?”
Curtis nodded his assent and lay back as the medic pulled aside the curtain in the doorway and walked out. Taking stock of himself, he felt pretty much like crap, which was probably not too bad, considering what had happened. Reminded of the laser blast he took when the Zuul stormed into the underground power room, he pulled at the neck of the hospital gown he wore. A few inches in and down from his right shoulder was a pink, mostly healed patch of shiny burn scar. Curtis blinked at the sight of the mostly healed tissue. How long have I been here? he wondered.
He heard muffled footsteps out in the hallway and looked up as Major Rawlins pulled the curtain aside and stepped in the room. Like Curtis, Jacob Rawlins was a tall man, but much more heavily muscled, and he exuded confid
ence. He had joined the Raiders when his father founded the company and had a distinguished career commanding the CASPer company.
When the Raiders had bought their first Mk 1 CASPers seven years ago, Jacob had jumped at the opportunity to master the new weapons system. And for four of those years, Curtis had been Jacob’s personal tech. He maintained and upgraded Jacob’s CASPer and spent long hours with the other young man talking about how they could make the amazing machines even better.
Curtis struggled to sit up as Jacob pulled a folding chair over to the bedside. “Relax, Curtis; take it easy. You’ve still got some recovering to do.”
The tech sergeant lay back in the bed again, scrubbed his face with one hand, and ran his fingers back through his hair. His long, shaggy brown hair. What the fuck?
“What’s going on, Jacob?” he demanded of his friend, glancing up from the long fingernails of his right hand.
Jacob sighed deeply and leaned back in the chair. As he did, Curtis’ eyes caught the glimmer of silver eagle’s wings on the lapel of his BDUs, the insignia of a full colonel, not the gold oak leaf he normally sported.
“I guess I should pick up where you got left out, huh? What’s the last thing you remember?” the normally energetic Jacob asked.
Curtis stared at him for a second. He looked exhausted. Dark bags hung below both eyes, and his posture wasn’t the ramrod straight military bearing he usually sported. “I remember the Zuul getting into the power relay room. Ashiz…Ashiz getting attacked. Lots of shooting, and I tried to activate the relay and power up the automated defenses. I guess I managed to get the relay online before I passed out?”
“Nope, not quite. Your new best friend Mike says you hit the initiate button, but the software requires an additional confirmation. You were passed out, so you couldn’t finish the startup sequence. But Mike was able to turn on the relay and get power back to the defenses. Good thing, too; if he hadn’t been able to do it, there wouldn’t have been anything at all left of the Raiders.” He let out another sigh and patted Curtis’ shoulder gently. “You guys saved everyone, no question about that.”
“Mike finished the activation sequence? What happened to everyone else? And what about the Zuul?” Curtis head swirled, and he had to lay back against the bed again.
“Easy, buddy. Here, have some water.” Jacob held a straw as Curtis took a few sips out of the cup Gutierrez had left on the table. Jacob continued, “To answer the easy question first, Mike happened to the Zuul.” Jacob smiled at Curtis’ uncomprehending stare. “Our Ksshtah friends may not have any natural predators anymore, but it seems they kept some of the defense mechanisms of their ancestors. It appears when a Ksshtah is terrified, like when a pack of Zuul are about to dissect and eat you, they release some kind of fungal spore to protect themselves. In the case of both Humans and Zuul, this spore doesn’t really harm you, but acts as an extremely powerful, very quick-acting sedative. You and the Zuul were all affected. That’s actually what caused you to pass out, not the laser wound. When he calmed down a little, Mike finished the activation sequence and turned on the defenses. Unfortunately that spore is really potent; it basically put you in a coma. You’ve been asleep for over a month now, Curtis.”
Curtis was stunned speechless. A month!
Jacob shook his head. “You guys did a great job laying out those emplacements. When the defenses activated, the Zuul dropships didn’t last more than 10 seconds, and the vehicles they had not much longer. And apparently most of their officers were in the vehicles. A bunch of the infantry got caught in the open and were just torn apart. The big missile batteries blew the crap out of their transport. It ended up crashing off to the south of the compound. Once they took so many casualties and realized they had no way off planet, the rest mostly surrendered.”
The Raiders’ survival in the face of the massive attack helped, but Jacob’s avoidance of his other question told him what was coming next. “And the rest of my team?” Curtis’ whisper caused Jacob to lean forward, elbows resting on his knees.
“Of the team you had in the power relay room, it’s just you and Mike, Curtis. No one else made it. I’m so sorry, you guys were non-combatants; you shouldn’t have been put in that position. The three wounded you sent to the Zone 1 shelter all recovered. If you hadn’t done that, they would be dead, too. You saved them.” The colonel reached out again and gripped Curtis’ shoulder, trying to offer what support he could.
Curtis clenched his eyes, trying to stem the tears. Nineteen. Nineteen men and women of his tech team were dead. None of them were trained for combat, or even expected it. They’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He took a shuddering breath, trying to get control over himself. He rubbed his eyes with his hands, wiping away the incipient tears, and looked back up at the insignia on Jacob’s lapel.
“Your dad?” he asked softly, almost afraid to voice the question. Jacob’s face tightened in response, and he shook his head.
“No, he didn’t make it. His command section encountered a Zuul anti-tank team trying to get to Second Platoon, where they were encircled.” Jacob gave a sad smile, his eyes echoing Curtis’ pain. “He was out front, leading, as always. This time the business caught up with him.”
“I’m so sorry, Jacob.”
The new commander of the Raiders nodded his head, his jaw clenching and unclenching. He scrubbed his face with his hands and looked down.
“What about the rest of the company?” Curtis asked, breaking the pregnant silence.
It was Jacob’s turn to take a deep, shuddering breath. He picked his gaze up from the floor and faced Curtis again. “It’s bad; we took a lot of casualties. Across the board, not just the combat troops. The company will probably survive, the Ksshtah are paying us well, at least, but we’ll be a long time rebuilding from this. And I need your help, Curtis; we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. I need someone experienced I can trust to head the deployable support group. That’s you now, if you’re up for it.”
It took Curtis a second to process what his friend had just said. “Captain Roberts? Lieutenant Acharya? None of them made it?”
Jacob’s face tightened again, and Curtis’ heart clenched. “Casualties were really bad, Curtis. Really bad. Even without the promotion I’m giving you, you’re the senior Raider of the entire non-combat group right now. None of the officers survived. Not one. The Zuul broke into the maintenance compound and killed everyone, Curtis.” Jacob’s face twisted into a snarl that caused Curtis to flinch away from him. “They cut them down as they tried to run away, support staff with only a handful of sidearms!” The colonel’s hazel eyes, and he was The Colonel now, blazed. The fire that had been absent earlier was back, this time focused on the aliens that had devastated his command and killed his friends.
After a few steadying breaths, the colonel calmed down enough to continue, “The combat units are in awful shape, too. There’s less than a platoon of infantry left, barely enough to guard the Zuul we took prisoner. We have six functional CASPers, but only five pilots. There are two tanks and a single APC in operational condition to back them up.” He looked Curtis square in the eye this time, back in control of himself. “Lieutenant Borland and I are the only officers who survived, and Borland is a dropship pilot. Including you, there are seventy-three Humans left on this planet.”
Curtis stared back at Jacob in shock, almost unable to comprehend the staggering casualties. The Raiders had deployed to Ksshtah with a full company each of CASPers, tanks, and APCs backed up by two companies of infantry and the outsized support staff to install the automated defenses. Forty CASPers, twelve tanks, twelve APCs, and a total staff of more than six hundred…reduced to a bare handful of survivors huddling behind the turrets of the fixed defenses.
“The good news is our contract is up in three weeks. And then we’re taking our dead and getting the hell out of here.” Jacob’s steady gaze reassured Curtis a little bit. With good leadership at the helm, the Raiders were going to survive; thrive, even.
They would come back from this mess, and Curtis would be a part of it.
“Duty calls, Curtis. We’re so short on personnel, I’m part of the ready group in case we get hit again. It’s my shift, so I need to head back.” The tall man stood up and looked back to Curtis. “We won, Curtis. We’ll put this unit back together with the best people we can find when we get home. Pretty soon we’ll be giving the Horsemen a run for their money.” He gave an encouraging smile and patted Curtis on the shoulder again.
Curtis nodded mutely and watched his friend walk back to the crushing responsibilities that had landed on his shoulders. He laid back in the bed and finally let the hot tears flow down his face. He thought about the friends he’d never see again. The competent, ever-reliable Howard, who had been another of the Raiders’ first CASPer techs. The young, eager Ashiz, whose family had immigrated to the US from Egypt just before first contact. Dozens of others, cut down far too early on a planet no one else on Earth had ever even heard of.
Curtis stared down at his hands, sore from clenching his fists, and tried to relax them a little. He closed his eyes and tried to begin thinking about rebuilding the Raiders, and the future they still had in front of them. But he couldn’t get one nagging thought out of his head.
This is victory?
* * *
The bar was utterly silent. Someone had turned off the sound system, and it was obvious most of the patrons were straining to hear the story. What was more unusual was his squad was dead quiet, not a word being said among them. They sat and stared at the old man, his gaze still fixed off in the distance.
Manning surveyed his people. There were a couple of pale faces, and all were universally somber, especially Lewis. Maybe this would help rein in that cocky streak.
The Gates of Hell Page 39
