by Bobby Adair
Thunder rocks sublevel one. The air feels like it’s exploding again. I’m knocked over on my side as pieces of furniture and bodies fly through the doors I’d propped open.
“Lost my cafeteria cam!” shouts Blair.
Doesn’t matter. Not to me. Not right this second. I have my assignment. I reduce my defensive grav as I jump back up and plant myself at the corner. I peek inside. Magically clear.
Well, not magic, chemistry and physics did their work. The blast blew everything away from the center of the room. Much of the furniture and Trog debris is either stuck to or bouncing back off the walls.
Some of the Trogs are moving fast, rebounding on too much defensive grav, beach balls with no control, arms and legs swinging, alive but dazed. Others are shooting through the room, balloons rocketing red plumes of blood vapor, parts of furniture lethally protruding from their bodies.
I shout, “Blair, did we get them all?”
“No!” she warns. “Seven or eight are still in the other hall. They’re coming!”
I look to the other side of the cafeteria just in time to see them crowding through the door.
I drop to a knee and fire.
The Trogs are ready for my assault with chest plates set to max deflect. My rounds arc into the floor, walls, and ceiling.
They’re coming quick, not full-speed, but fast enough to make me plan my retreat. The Trogs seem to understand that the grav from their frontal plates is more effective when combined, when they’re packed tightly together.
“Goddamn!” I shout. “These things aren’t supposed to be smart.”
“Don’t believe everything you see on TV,” Brice tells me. “Don’t get up and run, Kane. Draw them closer.”
I know what he has in mind, but it’s my life he’s gambling with.
I scoot back, just a bit, enough to let the Trogs know I’m scared. I flip from auto back to single-shot. No sense wasting ammo.
They’ve crossed half the cafeteria, and they’re picking up speed as their confidence builds. They know they have me.
Fortunately, not all things we know as fact turn out to be true.
A stream of hypervelocity slugs traces out from the far corner of the cafeteria, raking across the Trogs’ exposed backs.
Blood sprays into the air. Limbs fly away. Torsos rip. Troglodytes fall.
Seemingly, before the slugs have all found their marks, Brice is on his feet, stalking through the chaotic space, tapping out the remaining Trogs who aren’t dead yet.
“What’s happening?” Blair asks. “What’s going on? Did it work?”
“Clear,” I tell her. “We’re both good.”
Brice moves toward me, a grim smile on his face.
I give him a nod.
He nods back. No, ‘Yes, Major’ bullshit.
We’re comrades again.
And fuck, we’re good at this shit.
Chapter 16
Blair is shouting, “Kane! Kane!”
A distant explosion rumbles through the stone in the walls. There’s another fight somewhere. I hope our troops are getting the best of it.
I look around as Brice and I run through a passageway, not going anywhere in particular, just getting away from the scene of noisy mayhem we just sewed. More Trogs are sure to be on their way to investigate.
“Kane!”
“Yeah?” I pant. “Are we back in trouble?”
“I don’t know where you are.”
That explains her yelling. She felt like she was losing control.
“Stop for a sec,” I tell Brice, as I look around for pursuers.
Brice is uncomfortable. We’re midway between two intersections, easy targets for Trogs coming from either end. He points to a cross hall ahead. “We’ll stop up there.”
He’s already running.
“We’re looking for you.” Blair’s voice sounds anxious through the crackle on the comm.
“Here,” says Tarlow. “I think they went this way.”
At the intersection, Brice peeks around the corners, readies his weapon, and says, “Okay.”
I come to a stop beside him and glance at the signs on the wall. I comm Blair, “Intersection of halls Q and J. There’s an airlock door to a machine shop or something just down from us. Can’t tell for sure—the sign is all scratched up.”
“I know where that is,” comms Tarlow.
“Call up the camera,” Blair tells him. To me, she says, “We have eleven of our people in a repair hangar that—”
“Ships?” I interrupt, too excited. Hangars imply flight, which means we have a chance to rocket the hell out of here. “Are there ships in there?”
“Not really,” she counters, seeming to take some satisfaction from correcting me. “Big pieces of equipment. Mining…things. It’s a huge place, open to the vacuum. There’s an airlock they can use to access sub one.”
Probably no ships, but survivors of the bombardment. I nudge Brice and smile. Good news coming over the comm. I ask Blair, “How do I get there?”
“Ask her about the Trogs.” Brice has his priorities in order. “Where are they?”
“Most of them are on the surface,” Tarlow informs us.
“Most?” Derision wrapped up in a one-syllable question. We have no room for ambiguity.
Tarlow hears every drip of meaning in my response. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot. I’m trying to help.”
“Blair,” I ask, “do we know how many Trogs are down here? Do we know where they are?”
“We’ve spotted two squads,” she answers. “Six in one, a dozen in the other. The six are in the cafeteria. They went in a few minutes ago, but now I can’t see them. The cameras in that room aren’t working, so we don’t know what they’re doing.”
Like I give a shit what they’re up to inside. I don’t say that, of course. “Let me know if they come this way. The other squad?”
“Headed in your direction,” she tells me. “They’re cautious. They have a ghost Trog leading them. He seems smart. Checking rooms as they go, methodically and slowly. As long as you don’t make any noise and stay away from them, you don’t have to worry.”
I ask again. “Where are they?”
“Near the corner of Oscar and Frieda One,” Tarlow explains.
“Oscar and Frieda?” I roll my eyes and Brice sees. “Fucking hallway names.” Back to Tarlow, I ask, “You mean halls O and F?”
“It’s what they call them up here.” Tarlow is defensive again. “I don’t—”
“Look,” I cut him off. “Nobody’s blaming you. We’re just trying to live through this. The signs are labeled in letters. Talk to me in letters. I don’t have time to learn your naming system.” I’m scrolling around on the map image on my d-pad, trying to find the intersection where we’re standing.
Brice leans over for a peek. He points. “Is that the cafeteria there?”
I stop scrolling for a moment. “Yeah.”
He looks back up the corridor.
A quick series of explosions shakes the walls.
“Is that coming from down there?” I ask over the comm.
“On the surface?” replies Tarlow.
“Railguns or C4?” I hope the bombardment hasn’t restarted.
“Can’t say.” Tarlow sounds sheepish. “No camera up there can see through the dust.”
I put the explosions out of my mind. We took several turns and ran down through a few long passages to get here. I glance around. “We’re safe for the moment.” Then back to Blair. “That group is still in the cafeteria, right?”
“Right.”
I finally find O and F on the map. “Here,” I tell Brice as I point. “A dozen here with a Ghost Trog in the lead. They’re searching for us room by room.” I scroll the map to our position. “This is where we are. I think.”
“I’ve found you on camera,” says Blair.
“I feel all warm and fuzzy.” It’s a dickish response, but the least offensive of the two I was contemplating. “Where do w
e need to go?”
“Airlock thirteen,” Tarlow instructs. “Thirteen.”
I’m scrolling my map image again, looking for the number. “I only see hallway labels.”
“The image doesn’t have any airlock numbers on it?”
I locate what looks like the airlock we entered the subterranean level through. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”
“I must have sent you the wrong file.”
Brice isn’t hearing Tarlow and Blair, but my side of it is telling him enough. “Cluster?”
I nod.
“Thirteen is at the end of Oscar One.”
“Oscar One?” I make it sound like an insult. “The hallway the ghost Trog and his squad are in, that’s Oscar One?”
“Yes,” answers Tarlow like he doesn’t understand the connection.
“It sounds bad,” Blair tells us, I guess trying to offer comfort with her bureaucratic coldness. “I think we can pull it off. There’s a cross hall, Einstein One,” she pauses and corrects herself, “E-1. If you can get there, it intersects with O near the airlock.”
“How near?” I ask.
“Near enough.”
That’s a lie. I have no doubt. “Which way do we need to go?”
Chapter 17
I peek around the corner. O-1 is wide, maybe four meters, one of the main corridors on this level, running three hundred meters across the complex. Way down at the far end, I think I see a green light above an airlock door. Just over halfway, Trogs are in the hall, some are loitering. Others are filing into a room through its double airlock doors. Nearly every room on this level has an airlock in case of a depressurization accident somewhere else on the base.
On the comm link with Brice, I share a realization, “This place is huge.”
“Nine levels, the size of this maze,” Brice leans for a quick look around the corner, “I’d say you’re right.”
“It must have been a profitable venture before it turned to the rebel cause and became a Free Army base.”
“Probably still is,” suggests Brice. “Unless the Free Army built it out this way.”
Recalling the wide variety of shops and storage rooms we passed as we were finding our way here, I deduce, “There’s a lot of infrastructure here. Seems like overkill for a few hundred people running an ice mining operation.”
Brice peeks down the hall at the Trogs again, then takes a look in the other direction. “What do you think? Thirty meters of straight hall with not an iota of cover between here and the door?”
The door at this end of the corridor is the one we’re supposed to bring our eleven soldiers through. I look at a thirty-meter kill zone—one that over Blair’s camera looked ‘close enough.’ I sigh. “This blows.”
“Before you give yourself an aneurism,” says Brice. “Is this the right airlock?”
“Not that it matters much.” I point a thumb in the other direction. “The Trogs are about halfway up the hall. The same distance from each airlock.”
“Check with Blair.”
I comm her and Tarlow in. “Are we at the right end of O-1?”
“Yes, the airlock should be just to your right,” answers Tarlow.
“Just?”
Brice hears my side of the conversation again, and his dark laugh suggests maybe he’s thinking of heading down to level three and punching his fist through Tarlow’s faceplate.
I say to them, “I’m hoping while we were on the way over here you came up with a plan to make this work. Do you know how long we’ll be exposed out there? The Trogs will see us. I’d prefer not to be shot making this happen.”
“Don’t get whiney on me now.” Blair’s mean inner core is shining through.
“I’m just saying, if the plan is to shoot it out in front of the airlock, then me and Brice are ditching it. We’ll find another route through this maze so we can flank those Trogs and ambush them when they’re coming out of a room. We can deal with getting our troops inside later.”
“There’s no later,” Blair triumphantly tells me. “One of the troops up top found the airlock door, and they’re divvying up in groups to come through.”
“Great.” I check my ammo, and heave a weary sigh.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Tarlow offers. “I’ve tapped into the lighting control systems on sub one.”
“The whole floor?” I ask, perking up.
“Yes. Give it about thirty seconds.”
“Give what?”
Red and white emergency lights start flashing down the hall, casting splashes of color in our direction.
Brice looks at me with a question on his face.
I shrug, and peek around the corner. “I think this is Tarlow’s doing.”
The lights in the hundred meters of hall closest to our airlock turn off.
Those flashing are down at the other end.
Trogs down that way have their weapons up, and they’re looking around, confused.
“This is it,” says Blair. “It’s what we can do.”
Brice looks me up and down.
I glance down to check my color. In some places, my worn orange suits shows through. Mostly I’m still coated in asteroid dust.
“We’ll look like shadows against these stone walls,” says Brice. “Pretty good camouflage for this environment. With the light show, I think we’re safe to go.” He doesn’t wait for me to agree. He jogs into the hall and heads for the airlock door.
I follow, casting worried glances back down toward the Trogs.
Near them, lights are shining brightly down from the ceiling. With me and Brice in darkness, I’m hoping they can’t see us.
Ahead of me, Brice hits the airlock door release and it immediately swings open. The interior light blinks on as he jumps inside and it bathes him in a bright white. The same glow silhouettes me.
“Shit!” The words escape even as I’m diving inside to hide behind a bulkhead and press myself against an interior wall. “The lights in the airlock, Tarlow! Kill the lights in the airlock!”
Blair spews a fast tirade at him.
“I, I… they weren’t reading on, when I started,” babbles Tarlow.
Brice punches the button to swing the airlock door shut.
“I would have…” Tarlow’s words get lost in Blair’s ridicule.
The door, slowly, way too slowly, comes to a close.
The comm line goes silent for several painfully slow seconds, and then Blair passes us the news. “They’re coming your way.”
“Disappointing.” It seems like a good time to switch from sarcasm to understatement, a subtle form of sarcasm, in truth.
Turning anxiously to Brice, I ask, “How long did it take for the airlock to cycle last time?” I don’t ask ‘how long before the Trogs get here?’ ‘What do you think they’ll do when they run up and peek through the small glass viewport in the door and see two humans inside?’ ‘Will they shoot through the door?’ ‘Will those disruptor blades cut steel?’ All valid questions.
Air is hissing out of the airlock.
The sound is changing with the lowering pressure.
Brice is patient and prepared. His back is against the opposite door, and his rifle is ready.
“Four,” says Blair. “The rest are staying behind. Four are coming to investigate?”
“Running?” I ask.
“Jogging,” she tells me. “Not fast. Cautious.”
The air inside is almost gone.
Just a few more seconds.
Brice takes a glance through the exterior glass.
“What do you see?” I ask him.
“Stairs,” he answers. “Dust. Not as thick as outside, but it’s pretty murky out there.
A light above the exterior door flashes to green.
Brice pops the door open, and I nearly bowl him over to get through.
In a rush, we push the door closed behind us.
The light inside goes out.
“Made it,” I comm Blair, as Brice mounts the stairs.
/>
He’s calling to the troops in the hanger. The metallic ore in the dust is crackling the link with static, but I hear other voices.
“Don’t shoot,” Brice orders. “We’re coming up.”
“Contact,” I tell Blair. “Keep me posted on those Trogs. Also, we’ll need directions to another airlock so we can come back inside.”
Chapter 18
Blair tells me. “One of the Trogs hit the button to cycle the airlock.”
“Brice,” I call as I reach the top of the stairs beside him. We’re at ground level. “Four Trogs will be in the airlock in a minute.”
He looks down into the stairwell, twenty steps deep with the airlock exit at the end. His grim smile tells me all I need to know. Best odds we’ve had all day.
Dust hanging in the vacuum casts a ghostly gray over a digging machine as big as a bus, roughly stacked parts for a disassembled conveyor, drilling rigs of various sizes, a grav lift, and several oddly configured spaceships. I can make out the webbing of metal joists spanning a ceiling nearly lost in the haze above us. Several large holes are cut through the roof, each looking large enough to fly a small ship through. The hangar’s walls are far enough away from us to be obscured by the dust.
“At least this gray crap isn’t as thick in here as it was outside,” I mutter.
Human figures solidify out of the haze and come toward us.
“We have thirty seconds to set up an ambush,” Brice tells them as he nods his head down the stairs. “Four Trogs will be cycling out. They’re following us.” He starts to point at soldiers, directing them where to go. “We want the Trogs well away from the airlock stairs before we pull the triggers. I don’t want one getting back down and punching the button. If that happens, and one gets in, we’ll have another twenty coming to the party. And that’s just from the inside. There are more out there. The faster we kill these, the more likely our presence here will remain a secret.”
“We know,” says one of the soldiers, a sergeant Kendrick. It’s clear she’s put herself in charge of the unit, though I can’t tell whether the rest of the grunts are from one platoon or several.
Turns out, it doesn’t matter.
Brice and Kendrick quickly divide the soldiers into crossfire positions, leaving each one kneeling or standing behind a piece of metal equipment for cover.
