Camallay: An Infinite Worlds Novel (Marik's Marauders)

by Joel Babbitt

  But his job didn’t matter. No, he’d been carefully building a backup plan, a plan for financial independence, a plan that would make him free from the churn of constant sales quotas and revenue projections—a plan that Titus Brutian himself had unwittingly enabled.

  Two years ago Titus Brutian, self-styled dictator of Principay, had crossed the line. His colony’s resources had grown to the point where he could afford special items; items that couldn’t be sold legally, special tech that would get him terminated if the solkin authorities ever found out. And once he crossed the line, he had gone all out. Now Brutian had a slew of forbidden tech items that were worth a fortune, thanks to none other than Josh Langdon and Stellar Corp.

  Smiling as he thought about it, Josh Langdon knew that now all he had to do was get to the secret bunker where all of it was stored. He wiped the sweat from his brow. Climbing through the hills was no easy task, especially in dinosaur-infested lands, but he’d had to ditch his mining cart quickly when he saw the solkin cruiser descending. Having spent years working the illegal tech side of things, he’d studied the solkin enough to know that when they came to the scene of an incident, they homed in on every vehicle first, taking out targets indiscriminately—what they called ‘suppressing the locals.’

  He’d hid in a small box canyon until the first team of paradroid suppressors had passed by, continuing his jog toward the secret bunker with one eye on the sky. As it turned out, he’d not been all that far from the bunker when he’d ditched the mining cart, probably two kilometers at most, so within fifteen minutes he found himself at the turnoff from the main trail up to the intermediate watch tower that served as a warning post on the inner ring of Principay’s defenses.

  Climbing the trail warily, looking around him with his crossbow in hand, he was surprised to see a quadcopter sitting just outside the bunker.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Jim Ryker had absolutely no idea why a solkin commander, by his heavy powered armor, would be here—wherever here was. But right there, standing in front of him, was a solkin commander. His armor gleamed under the mercurial layer of energy that shielded the man from most small arms. He stood with arms folded over his armored chest, a disapproving look visible through his face-shield.

  “I don’t know…” Ryker said, with complete honesty.

  “My Suppressors said you were in pursuit of Joshua Langdon,” the solkin commander said firmly. “Why can you not remember where he was going?”

  “Um… Josh Langdon? Titus Brutian?” Ryker said, trying to think fast, but seemingly unable to. His mind felt like he was mentally trudging through a vat of molasses. Finally, he had to shake his head. “Sir, I’m afraid all I know is that I’m here, wherever here is. I did see a mining cart go over that ridge a few minutes ago, however, if that’s helpful.”

  The solkin commander lifted his face-shield to take a closer look at Ryker. Holding up a device, he scanned Ryker’s head, guessing the results before he ever looked at the readout. “You’ve been deep-wiped,” the commander said, shaking his head at the flagrant use of illegal tech. “Very well, I’ll find them without your meager help.”

  The solkin commander turned to get on his grav-sled, his mind churning on who would have deep-wiped this human. Surely Joshua Langdon would have just shot him. Who wanted to hide whatever this human had known? He was certain that all would be revealed in its time, but for now he had a quarry to chase. Soon the solkin commander and his entourage of paradroid suppressors all left on their grav-sleds at a fast hover,

  As he watched them go, Ryker stood trying to think. Clarity was coming back to him through the haziness, but no memories of this place were coming with it. In fact, the last thing he could remember doing was setting the bots on his linker and situence glasses to search for any traces of his sister Rianna in Prexlar’s nets, who had mysteriously disappeared a couple of days before and was rumored to have left planet—Prexlar that is.

  Ryker looked around himself. Finding a small gear-bag on the ground nearby, he opened it, finding his situence glasses and linker.

  It didn’t take much reviewing of logs, investigation notes, and video archives for him to get a pretty good idea of why he was here—on Camallay of all places—and some of what had happened, though he could find no reference to what had caused the EMP disaster at… the nearby Principay Colony.

  Ryker shook his head. It was a lot to take in all at once. He felt totally disoriented.

  Digging through his video logs on his situence glasses, he quickly found the last entry, a conversation he had recorded between himself and his sister talking about a secret bunker that Josh Langdon and Titus Brutian had to the north of Principay, and a possible fusion bomb…

  * * *

  Colonel Marshal Alexander and Captain Shannon Washington stood looking at the array of illicit technology in front of them in amazement. They had managed to get the door to the bunker open, mostly due to Shannon’s hacking abilities, but after that the process of getting the vault door open to reveal these goodies had mostly involved a laser-drill. Now that the massive metal door had yielded to gigawatts of focused laser energy, however, the two officers couldn’t believe the sight in front of them.

  “I’m counting six sets of powered armor, sir,” Captain Washington said. “All comparable to Solkin Assault Armor configurations.”

  Colonel Alexander nodded slowly. “Not to mention those four light mechs,” he said, pointing to the alcoves tucked back on either side of the vault door where giant robot-like suits of armor stood with cockpits open, waiting for pilots to bring the metal monsters to life.

  Washington turned around and gasped in surprise at the massive beasts lurking in their lairs. Shaking her head, she followed the colonel as he walked slowly down the broad central corridor of the vault, mentally cataloguing everything they found.

  “Four grav-sleds, that box looks like some sort of advanced shield generator, oh, there’s a memory manipulation station, and…”

  “Sir, it looks like they robbed a solkin supply ship,” Washington said in amazement.

  “No,” Alexander said as he approached one of the grav-sleds and pulled up the manifest data on his situence glasses. “These look like Stellar Corp items, or from one of their sub-manufacturers. I’ve been around solkin gear most of my life, and while these are good, they’re clearly not solkin.”

  “How can you tell, sir?” Washington asked.

  “Well, see now the Solkin only ever buy parts from any particular company. Then they take all those parts from disparate companies throughout the galaxy, assemble them on their core worlds, and add in the most advanced components, things that they make themselves, things that no subject race is licensed to produce, things like genius neural matrixes, anti-grav drives, and such.”

  Pointing at a suite of anti-gravity packs hanging on the wall in another alcove, he continued. “That way we humans, trillos, kiz’zit, and all the rest of the subject races don’t ever get their key systems, like these anti-grav jump-packs, or those mechs back there.”

  “Yes, sir, but how can you tell these are fakes?” Washington pressed.

  “Because solkin don’t write on their equipment,” he answered. “And these are marked in plain Standard,” he said, pointing to the words ‘This side up’ on the device. “But that was just the first clue. Look at the discoloration on these anti-grav plates. Whoever manufactured them is still guessing at how the solkin manufacture them, and is trying different approaches it appears. Also, the tubing is arranged differently. Solkin always try to hide the internals of their machines. Makes them look more sleek and elegant. This one’s tubing and control sections are plain for all to see.”

  “Do you think Brutian got these all from Stellar Corp?” Washington asked.

  “I think once we track down the manifests, or even better, the finances, that we’ll have an ironclad case against Stellar Corp that will likely get their charter here on Camallay revoked,” Colonel Alexander said as he turned around
and drew his pistol. “Isn’t that right, Josh?”

  “You’re getting soft, old man,” Stellar Corp’s leering senior rep was standing not twenty feet behind them with a plasma flamer from the armory aimed at them. “Time was that you’d have heard me walking in the bunker, not sneaking up on you.”

  “Well,” Alexander said, his eyes narrowing as he faced the traitor. “Josh Langdon, my former protégé. How nice to see you again.” His voice was anything but inviting.

  “Likewise,” Langdon said flatly. “I suppose this must be my replacement in Marik’s Marauders,” he said, pointing the flamer at Captain Washington.

  “Now Josh,” Alexander started, “you know no one can truly replace you. But I do hope you understand that we did have to move on without you.”

  “How touching,” Langdon said. “Now put your guns down, or I’ll melt both of you.”

  “I think you mean if we put our guns down you will melt both of us,” Alexander corrected.

  Captain Washington looked at her boss, who was motioning for her to move away from him. She took a pair of slow steps, trying not to draw Langdon’s attention as she fingered her blaster pistol.

  “Oh, come now,” Langdon quibbled. “You don’t trust me?”

  “No, Josh,” Colonel Alexander answered in all seriousness. “You’ve shown that you can’t be trusted. Right Commander Brutian?” he said, looking behind Langdon, who obligingly glanced behind himself to see if, indeed, Titus Brutian was there.

  He wasn’t.

  That, however, was the opportunity Alexander was looking to create, and so he pulled the trigger five times in rapid succession, while on the other side of the broad corridor Captain Washington whipped her pistol out of its holster and did the same, emptying her energy clip on the highest setting into the man she had replaced.

  Both of them were stunned to see all their laser bolts deflect off of an invisible shielding that shimmered and moved in a mercurial dance as it adjusted to the power of the bolts, dissipating each shot in rapid succession. Looking quickly at each other, they both jumped away toward alcoves on opposite sides of the broad corridor as super-heated plasma burst from Langdon’s flamer and scoured the corridor, blackening the walls and floor as it left a red-hot mess of fizzling particles blanketing the area.

  Colonel Alexander was quick, but the first part of the blast caught the trailing end of the precision rail-rifle he’d brought with him, melting the end of the barrel and sheering off the strap that held it to his back. Cursing his poor luck, he dove for cover as the remains of the shield-piercing weapon clattered to the ground.

  “Clever,” Langdon said, his voice playful, almost arrogant. “But not really. You don’t honestly think I fell for that, do you? I wanted to see if you’d actually shoot me. Now I know.”

  Pressed up against the cover of their respective alcove walls, Colonel Alexander and Captain Washington looked around their alcoves for something, anything that would help them take out their heavily shielded target. Not thinking a grav-sled would do well against a plasma flamer, Colonel Alexander decided to use it as a distraction instead.

  As the grav-sled sped out into the corridor, causing Langdon to jump to one side, Alexander quickly ran out of the short range of the plasma flamer, sprinting down the corridor in a zig-zag pattern toward the suits of powered armor at the far end of the vault.

  Langdon pulled the blaster carbine from off his back, dialing up the power and trying to track Alexander’s movements before squeezing off a pair of shots. They both went wide as Alexander dove into the last alcove on the right—the one that held the only suit of powered armor that Langdon couldn’t see anything of but one arm from his end of the vault, though Langdon was now running after Alexander, intent on catching him before he could suit up.

  In a moment of sudden clarity, Captain Washington knew exactly what she had to do. Pulling a round globe from her backpack, she pulled a pin and let it fly, diving behind the crates of more mundane supplies that occupied her alcove. The concussion that followed sent pieces of crates, grav-sleds, plasticrete, metal flooring, even light fixtures flying in all direction in a maelstrom of fragmentation. The destruction was excessive, but then that’s what thermobaric grenades did.

  Pushing a crate off of herself, Captain Washington slowly got up to a crouch, coughing as she tried to look around, covering her mouth with her shirt to help her breath. Dust from the grenade filled the entire area, billowing about in eddies that carried white plasticrete particles in churning flows—a byproduct of the still-burning mass of sticky, flaming strands the grenade put out. It was impossible to see anything, and hard enough to breathe, but she was pretty certain that no one could have survived a close blast like that, fancy solkin shield or not.

  Pulling the parts of her T-1 Rifle out of her backpack, she carefully assembled the weapon, looking up here and there to try to catch a glimpse of where Josh Langdon had been, of where the grenade had detonated. Finishing the assembly, she set the blaster rifle on Overcharge—a power-hungry setting normally reserved for shooting at vehicles or heavily armored targets—and stalked toward the flaming mass in the middle of the vault.

  “Sir, are you still up?” Captain Washington called out.

  “Yes, I’m still alive,” Colonel Alexander replied from the far end of the vault. “That was a gutsy move, Shannon. So, did you get him or not?”

  In a sudden break in the churning cloud of debris, Shannon saw something coming at her at top speed. Throwing herself to one side, she barely avoided getting speared by the sharp front of a grav-sled as it sped past her in the air at top speed, a bloodied and subdued Josh Langdon riding it for all it was worth. Rolling to one side, she leveled the blaster rifle and fired, but the target had already disappeared into the dust cloud and she couldn’t tell whether she’d hit or not. She fired once more; the two second charging wait between overcharge shots was almost too much to bear.

  “He’s still up, sir!” she called out.

  Colonel Alexander came through the dust, grabbing her by the hand and helping her stand. “It’s alright, Shannon. Did you get a look at him?”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir. He’s bloodied. I think that grenade took out his shields.”

  Picking a small device up off the floor, Colonel Alexander looked at it for a moment before throwing it down again. “That looks like his shield device,” he said.

  “He’ll definitely think twice before tangling with us again,” Captain Washington said, her teeth bared in a feral grin.

  Patting the dust off his nanomer suit and slap plates, Colonel Alexander nodded. “You certainly got his attention, I’d say. Now we just need to finish the job.”

  “Yes, sir,” Washington said, swapping power clips in her rifle as the pair of warriors made their way toward the front of the vault to finish what Josh Langdon had started.

  * * *

  Up in the control room of the bunker, Josh Langdon wiped away the blood from his one good eye and stared in amazement at the shimmering forms that were just landing in the clearing outside the bunker. He knew what they were, of course; they were the bad-guys in way too many action movies, and supposed first-hand accounts of their handiwork were all over the darknet. These were solkin assassins—the ultimate administrators of solkin justice, if slaughtering anyone involved in or in close proximity to what the Solkin Overlords defined as a high crime could be considered justice.

  Punching the large, red button in the center of the console, he smiled a ragged smile, the cracked teeth on his left side only accentuating his look of vengeful glee as the rewarding sounds of heavy blast doors grinding down into place reverberated throughout the bunker.

  “That should keep them out,” he mumbled, holding a shred of his shirt against the hole in his neck that was bleeding more than any of the other puncture wounds he had.

  “Keep who out?” an all-too-familiar voice said from the doorway to the control room.

  Josh Langdon turned around in surprise to see none othe
r than Commander Titus Brutian. It took him a moment to get past the natural tension, but soon Langdon slouched back in his chair; Brutian was a commander of nothing now, just another refugee like himself. He did notice, however, that Brutian had taken the time to stop by their own private armory; he was kitted out in the best armor and sported the twin of his ruined personal shielding unit on his hip.

  “How did you get here?” Langdon spat, blood droplets spraying over the floor. “I thought they’d catch you for sure.”

  Brutian walked into the control room, looking around at the various displays before putting the heavy double-barrel blaster carbine he’d gotten from the bunker’s armory down on the work counter so he could reach up and scroll through the various camera feeds and images of their unwanted solkin guests.

  Brutian hadn’t answered, so Langdon continued. “I had a run in with Marik’s folks. There are two of them down in the vault.”

  “I see that Marik’s folks aren’t our only worries here,” Brutian muttered as he stood up from looking at the external camera feeds, the sharp edge of his voice coming through clearly.

  “Yes, I have Marik’s folks contained,” Langdon said, spraying plastiflesh over his neck wound so he could hold the cloth over his mouth. “We’ve got bigger worries than a couple of Marik’s mercs. Those are solkin assassins out there, ten of them at least by what the cameras are picking up!”

  “Do they have a perimeter established yet?” Brutian asked, trying to focus his companion.

  “Uh… no, from what I can see they’re only in the front. They appear to not know about the lower entrance,” Langdon said, then went back to pulling bits of metal out of his hand and spraying the various wounds with a rush-job of plastiflesh. He’d been fortunate to be wearing a nanomer suit and combat armor, elsewise his entire body would have been perforated. As it was, the wounds were only in his unprotected places—his head, neck, face, and hands.