McKinney glanced at the sign overhead – Level 214: Laboratory Areas 21-30, Augmentation Research Facility 1.
“I thought augmentations were banned,” said Corporal Bannerman, looking at the same sign.
“Maybe they’re allowed to do the research and just can’t make the final implants.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
According to the time on McKinney’s HUD, ten hours had passed since the alarms first went off on the Juniper. Or is it twelve? he asked himself. Time was already losing meaning and he put it down to the extended time without sleep. It was no time for pride and he ordered his suit to give him a shot of something to keep him awake. He felt a sharp jab in his thigh and moments later, it was as though a veil was lifted from his brain and the creeping fog dissipated.
“Sergeant Woods is ahead of us, sir,” said Bannerman. “He’s just leaving level 352.”
“It’ll take him a few minutes to stock up at the armoury.” McKinney grinned inside his visor. “That’ll give us a chance to gain a few levels.”
An unspoken game was in progress to see who could reach level 285 first. It was a game McKinney didn’t want to lose, though he didn’t want to die participating.
“Sergeant Woods hasn’t come across any Vraxar yet. Maybe they’re working their way outwards from the middle section of the Juniper.”
“I don’t think so. I’m sure they’ve got multiple access points. If Sergeant Woods hasn’t seen the bastards, he’s just got lucky.”
There was a shortcut to one of the main stairwells. It involved crossing from the outer edge of level 214 to the centre. Even though the Juniper was narrower here than in other places, there were nine hundred metres of corridors to negotiate before they reached this mini-objective.
The relative calmness of the journey so far was about to be shattered.
“Sir, there’s something coming up the stairs,” said Roldan, the edge in his voice clear across the open channel. “Two flights down – I can hear footsteps.”
“How many?”
“Hard to tell. Sounds like eight or more.”
“Right, move!” said McKinney.
“There’s no time, Lieutenant. They’ll see us if we try to run.”
“Belay that order,” McKinney barked. “Squad A, cover the stairwell exit. Squads B and C cover those other three corridors! I don’t want anything catching us by surprise.”
The squad was already in positions of cover, watching the exits. In seconds they’d adapted, with the men of Squad A training their weapons on the landing at the top of the steps. Roldan and Munoz fell back and pressed themselves against the wall a few metres to the right of the entrance. McKinney and Bannerman took the left side.
“Wait. Let them come into the room. We can’t allow any to escape.”
As he stared along the barrel of his gauss rifle at the opening, McKinney found he was holding his breath. He blew out gently and forced his breathing into a steady rhythm. The heavy sound of the approaching enemy’s footsteps was clear now. What if it’s a bunch of human survivors, trying to get to safety? he thought suddenly.
“Make damn sure it’s not friendlies before you start shooting,” he said.
It wasn’t friendlies.
“Vraxar confirmed,” said Corporal Li, with a much better vantage onto the stairwell landing.
The first pair of alien soldiers walked into the room. They were hulking lumps of reclaimed Estral flesh, patched up with metal and stinking like red meat left in the sun. The size of them was intimidating the first time - McKinney remembered them well and wasn’t frightened. He released the air from his lungs and put a slug through the metal-wrapped skull of the closest one.
McKinney’s shot was the trigger and the other men followed, sending a hail of gauss rounds into the front two Vraxar. The aliens toppled without a sound, exposing the group behind. McKinney took a step to the side and fired in short bursts, the bullets from his gun raking into the alien soldiers.
The Vraxar reacted quickly, as if surprise was no impediment to them. McKinney heard the crack of a hand cannon and was dimly aware of something ricocheting off the floor at his feet. He pressed himself against the wall to let the rest of Squad A finish things off.
It didn’t turn out to be quite so easy.
“More coming up,” said Garcia.
“Sounds like dozens of them,” said Webb.
“Squad B, assist,” said McKinney, suddenly feeling exposed away from the cover of the metal reception desks. He waved Bannerman to move away from the door and followed, keeping his gun trained on the doorway. On the opposite side, Roldan and Munoz got the message and did likewise.
The intensity of fire increased and the droning hum of warm gauss coils became a constant background noise. McKinney’s view into the stairwell landing was limited by the tightness of the angle and he craned out to see what was coming. There was a chaos of movement and shapes – a tantalising sight that failed to provide him with a clear idea of what was coming.
Something metallic sailed into the room. It bounced once and then came to a stop in the middle of the reception area. The warning shout left McKinney’s mouth even while his brain was asking why a grenade would be more of a cube than a cylinder.
“Get down!” he yelled.
The Vraxar grenade detonated with a solid thumping percussion and an explosion of pitch black flames. The grenade was poorly-thrown and the fires licked at one of the desks without harming the men behind it.
A second object followed the first. It clattered across the floor, skipped twice and came to rest a metre away from McKinney’s feet. The grenade was size of his fist and he looked at it with anger. He lifted one leg, intending to kick it away, knowing it would be far too late.
Before it could explode, the grenade skittered away to the side at high speed. It struck the wall at an angle and bounced away without detonating.
“You owe me one, Lieutenant,” said Corporal Li.
McKinney didn’t have time to offer thanks, nor to wonder at Corporal Li’s superhuman reactions and perfect aim. A couple of doses of the spacesuit battlefield adrenaline could give a trained soldier the ability to shoot the balls off a rat at two hundred paces.
“Webb, get a damned rocket in there!” he yelled.
“I thought you’d never ask, sir.”
The missile was flying before the words were finished. It streaked into the opening and erupted into white hot plasma. The landing and stairwell weren’t enough to contain the blast and the explosion spilled into the reception area, washing to either side. McKinney ducked and turned away. He felt the heat lick against his side and then it receded.
“Hold fire!”
He was moving at once towards the doorway. As he ran, he snapped out a grenade, priming it with a flick of his thumb. He threw it with a sideways action across the landing and down the stairs. A second grenade followed a moment later, just as the first one exploded. He threw a third and this time his aim was better – it arced with precision towards another switchback landing at the bottom.
The light from the third grenade blast had hardly receded when McKinney stepped onto the landing, the barrel of his repeater in hand. He heard footsteps as some of the men rushed to join him. Before anyone could get to him, McKinney saw movement below. Amongst the carnage, one of the Vraxar was struggling to stand. Its flesh was blackened and split and one arm had been torn clean away. McKinney squeezed the activation trigger for the briefest of moments and the alien was thrown backwards by a dozen repeater rounds.
“Clear,” he said, panting for breath as if he’d finished a hard-run thousand metres.
“We’d better get out of here, Lieutenant,” said Corporal Evans.
“How many did we kill?” asked Garcia.
“Roldan reckoned there were eight,” said Clay Reeves with the light tones of a man coming to terms with his first engagement.
“Twenty-eight, maybe,” said Garcia. “Look at these rotting bastards. I hate them even when
they’re dead.” He kicked out at a piece of metal plating. Whatever it had been originally attached to was no longer recognizable and it clanked away to the bottom of the stairs.
“I think we finished off this party of Vraxar,” said McKinney. “We need to move – there’ll be more once they realise what’s happened.”
“It might be a little harder to dodge them from now on,” said Corporal Li.
“We’ll kill the ones that get too curious.”
McKinney set off, heading for the middle of the three exit corridors. He stopped for a moment to examine the floor where the Vraxar grenade had blown up. The dark flames had done something to the metal, leaving it pitted and uneven. He scuffed at a patch with the toe of his boot and the alloy crumbled into dust. Whatever tech the Vraxar filled their grenades with it was something new, though seemingly no more effective than the plasma used by the Space Corps.
With the first engagement over, McKinney felt a calm descend upon him. He kept the squad moving at a good pace, whilst at the same time ensuring they didn’t leave themselves too exposed to a surprise attack. His suit comms received the occasional update from Sergeant Woods, which he listened to without providing detailed responses. There wasn’t enough intel for him to spend much time planning out tactics with this second group. It seemed best to simply get a move on and reach the meeting point as efficiently as possible. To McKinney, this meant getting there without anyone dying.
They continued through the corridors, their guns at the ready and with more than an occasional glance over their shoulders. The previously-muffled sounds coming from other areas of the orbital were now louder, and they echoed through the structure. It was impossible to pinpoint the direction from which the noises came and the added uncertainty set the squad on edge. A few of the men muttered amongst themselves, conjecturing that the Vraxar were now actively seeking to find whoever had killed one of their patrols. McKinney thought the same and he broke into a jog.
They reached the central stairwell without further incident. For the ascent, McKinney set up a routine whereby the three squads would advance one at a time. The front squad would hold every landing and the other two squads would move up to claim the next. It wasn’t too slow and it was reassuring to McKinney that he was taking a careful approach that didn’t risk his men any more than necessary.
The stairwell ended and deposited them onto level 250. An overhead sign bore the words Main recreation area.
“This is more like it,” said R1T Ricky Vega. “Look – we’ve got a gym to the left and get this – a massage area over this way.”
“Hey, there’re video games along this corridor according to my overlay,” said Mills. “Why don’t we get this treatment in the barracks?”
“Because the Space Corps hates you,” said Garcia.
“Everyone shut up for a minute, or take it out of the channel,” said McKinney. “I’m thinking.”
He studied the HUD overlay again. The Juniper was logically laid out, but it was still hard for him to plan more than two steps in advance, simply because there was so much information to take in. He extended his left arm and moved it in a curving gesture.
“If we follow this corridor to the outer wall, there’s another flight of steps to level 251. From there we can access one of the secondary stairwells which will take us up to the level 280 entrance foyer.”
“My overlay shows nothing when I try to look at levels 281 through to 289,” said Corporal Evans.
“Maybe it’s rank locked,” said McKinney. “Those levels show up on my HUD.”
“Try not to get lost, huh?” said Corporal Li, pushing his knuckles into Evans’ upper arm.
“I’ll do my best,” muttered Evans.
“I can hear movement on the stairwell, sir,” said Roldan.
“Coming our way?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s a few flights down. Or up.”
“The place must be crawling with them,” said Bannerman. “It’s like we’re finding more resistance the higher we go.”
McKinney didn’t like the idea of being the prey in a Vraxar pursuit. Part of him wanted to wait here and see what turned up, so he could fill it with bullets. He knew it was a bad idea – there were surely thousands of the aliens onboard and there was no hope of winning an extended shootout.
“Let’s pick up the pace – we’re heading left.”
The corridor was wide and had regular distance markings to suggest personnel were encouraged to use it as part of a training circuit. After a fast-marched fifty metres, a long window appeared in the right-hand wall. McKinney peered into the room before committing his men to showing themselves.
“Must have been peak time when the toxin reached this gym,” he said. He swore and punched the wall twice.
Without further word, he strode off, struggling to keep his anger in check. He squeezed the barrel of his repeater. The metal was solid and with no flex at all. He took comfort from it and wished there were Vraxar for him to shoot. Can’t think like that. If we reach the C&C without bloodshed it’ll be a victory.
He clung to the idea even though it didn’t clear his anger. The window turned into solid wall and McKinney experienced a kind of relief at knowing the dead were hidden from his gaze. It didn’t change the truth, but it saved him from having to stare at it directly.
A little way ahead the passage offered a right-hand turn, whilst also continuing on straight. According to the overlay, this new passage continued for a few metres and then opened out into the second of level 250’s four gyms. More than anything McKinney wanted to go a different way, to avoid looking into the accusing eyes of the dead. Unfortunately, the next best alternative added another five hundred metres onto the route and he couldn’t allow his weakness to result in such a waste of time.
He raised a hand and the squad stopped, maintaining their two-abreast column. With great care, McKinney leaned out just far enough for his visor sensor to see along the corridor. The doorway was wide and afforded him a good view beyond. There were Vraxar in the room and though McKinney couldn’t make out the specifics, he didn’t like what he saw.
“They’re in there,” he said across the open channel. “I can see seven or eight. It’s some new type – these ones are smaller and I don’t think they’re armed. They’re dragging bodies somewhere.”
“Maybe we should skip past, sir,” said Corporal Evans. “It’ll add time but avoid conflict.”
“We can’t get by without them seeing us and I don’t want to wait it out. There’s no way to tell whether or not they’ll end up coming along here and then they’ll find us anyway.”
“We shouldn’t wait here,” said Corporal Li. “It’s too exposed if we get unlucky and the Vraxar come from in front or behind.”
The words were prophetic.
“There’s something coming into the room we just left, sir,” shouted last man Jeb Whitlock.
McKinney made his mind up. “We’re going in there. Squad A first and take the left, Squad B, right. Squad C, deal with it as it comes.”
“Want me and Musser to clear it out first, sir?” asked Webb.
“No, we’re not waiting. Get in.”
Without checking to see if everyone understood, McKinney broke cover and charged along the short corridor. He sensed the others of Squad A at his back and heard the muted contact of their boots on the floor.
Five Vraxar were visible ahead – they were six feet tall and spindly, with the dry, yellowing skin of a corpse left in the desert for a century. They had dark metal bars and plates fastened to their limbs and shoulders. Two of them were crouched over the body of a man, poking at it with long fingers. McKinney was in the lead and without breaking stride he sprayed the aliens with a roaring burst from his repeater. Gobbets of dry flesh flew into the air and the Vraxar fell soundlessly.
He entered the room and his brain took in the details – plain metal walls thirty metres long, with a high ceiling. Gym equipment of all types was arranged in neat rows, some of th
e display screens still running from whatever power source they were plugged into. There were lots of Vraxar here – maybe thirty or forty in total, most of them the smaller types. In the far corner, a group of larger soldiers were already lifting their guns in preparation.
McKinney took aim into the corner and sprayed it with slugs from his gun. Garcia and Roldan stood to either side, the thunder from their own repeaters joining with his. McKinney heard the pings and clangs of ricochets, and debris from a row of treadbikes flew into the air.
Then came the sound of heavy-duty plasma tube coils charging up and a rocket screamed over his shoulder, detonating amongst the larger Vraxar and turning their flesh into charcoal.
“Reeves, Munoz, cover our backs! Roldan, get that bastard! Webb, hold fire!”
The sound of gunfire reached a deafening crescendo. McKinney knew the tales of soldiers who revelled in it – who gave themselves over to the madness of chaos. He felt the seductive pull as he poured the hatred of his bullets into the enemy.
The Vraxar fell – there were dozens of them in here, far more than McKinney had expected. Wherever he saw movement, he swung his repeater towards it, the muscles on his forearms straining against the kick. Pieces of flesh – alien and from the Juniper’s dead personnel – joined the pieces of metal and plastic from the shattered gym equipment, clouding the vision of the squad and making it hard to pick up the few remaining Vraxar as they dashed for the exits. Even the jerky, bobbing stride of the aliens was repulsive and reminded McKinney of long-limbed insects. His anger rose again and he didn’t lift his finger from the repeater’s trigger.
For the first few seconds of the engagement, McKinney dared to hope these smaller aliens were unarmed. Then he saw a dark shape in the hand of one. The Vraxar fired its pistol only once before it was killed in a converging barrage of gauss slugs. That single shot was enough and it took Chance right between the eyes, smashing through the man’s reflective visor and sending him straight to the floor.
McKinney spat in fury and fired again and again wherever he saw movement.
Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2) Page 11
