Rihan responded “The mine has numerous air conditioning plants spread throughout the complex. They were designed to support 200 people. So it’s going to get stuffy in here pretty soon. We have some high oxy containers that can be used to assist those in distress. But these will have to be used sparingly.”
“Medical?”
“We have a temporary emergency operating theatre and field hospital set up but we’re very shot of surgeons, just three qualified and an intern. We have reasonable medical supplies though we may need to call for donations of blood for certain types.”
“Comms?”
“We have the mobile comms centre setup here and this piggybacks on the larger mining comms centre. So far the enemy has not destroyed the comms arrays on the surface. But it shouldn’t take them long to do so. Then we’ll be effectively out of comms with Fleet or Alliance HQs. Comms down in the complex is always difficult but so far the standard suit comms works fine on military channels for about three kilometres and when switched to the mine channel with its booster systems you can hail anywhere in the complex. But that may change if the enemy starts jamming.” And Rihan shrugged her shoulders to imply that there was not a lot they could do about that.
“Alright I think we’ve covered most things requiring an immediate response” said Pious. “I would like to commend you all for the efforts you have made and remind you that much, much more will be required of you before we get out of this. There is hope. I have signalled Fleet and Alliance HQs requesting immediate support. The Wasp Group could be here day after tomorrow but that will depend on resupply and command factors that I have no knowledge or power over. If for any reason the Wasp Group cannot be committed then the Enterprise Group should be able to make it here in ten or eleven days. We need to be able to hold on till at least then. I urge you all to set the right example to your subordinates. They need to be convinced that there is hope and that the future of humanity may well hang on their efforts. Every person needs to step up for this trial and I look to you to make sure they do.”
“Of course Sir. You can count on us” said Rihan. The others nodded their affirmation.
“Excellent. I will remain here along with the Base Commander. The rest of you had better get back to your posts.”
Chapter 8. Pulton 1 1800, 24 May.
1st Lt Liz Adair found Taleen Gregorian and her three fellow effectives from Alpha Team, 2nd Pl, in one of the rooms off the main tunnel just 500m from the main entrance. Hafa had been sent to the medical post and the rest of them had been getting some food and rest.
“Taleen” said Liz “I want you to take charge of Alpha Team. Are you up for it?”
Taleen looked for approval from her colleagues. No one objected and Miko Lampo nodded. Turning to Liz she responded “OK Maam.”
“Good. You’re now acting Corporal” said Liz.
“Why not acting Sergeant?” asked Miko.
“One step at a time, Miko” responded Liz. She turned back to Taleen and said “do a good job and I’ll put you up for the third stripe.”
“No worries Maam. I’ll do my best to keep these sorry fellows alive” said Taleen.
“OK I have a job for you all. The OC (Officer Commanding) reckons the enemy will try and blow out the baffles in the shaft and then hover down with one of their battle shuttles and blow the blast door. When that happens we need to take out that shuttle such that it blocks the entrance. If we can do that, then it will buy us a lot of time.” Liz could see the apprehension on their faces but knew that now was not the time to pause.
“The OC is going to position a Trojan off the tunnel road about 500m back from blast doors. It will fire on the enemy shuttle and hopefully take it out. However, we need an insurance policy and that’s where you guys come in” said Liz.
Drew looked at Sully and shook his head. Then turned to Liz and asked “Why us again, Maam?”
“I’ll be blunt. I need marines who won’t panic. You guys proved your worth earlier. Can I count on you?” posed Liz.
Sully piped up “You can always count on the wog boys, Maam.” Drew elbowed him.
Liz looked at Taleen and Miko. They both nodded and then she looked to Drew, who reluctantly nodded as well.
“Good. Go and grab three rocket launchers and meet me back near the entrance. I’ll show you where to deploy and what to do when the time comes” ordered Liz.
Ten minutes later, Alpha Team was back at the entrance. Taleen, Drew and Sully each carried a rocket launcher and three rockets plus their rifles. Miko was rather pleased that he didn’t have any more to carry other than his quanto. Charlie Team was deployed in four positions staggered down the tunnel, each 50m apart. There was not going to be time to dig in extra pits, so Liz bumped the Charlie Team troopers out of the first two positions and they scurried back to the first room off the side some 200m from the entrance. Drew and Sully were assigned the forward pit and Taleen and Miko the one behind.
“You and your big mouth, Sully” said Drew. “Look what you’ve got us into. Not only are we on point again but we’re going to be taking on one of those beam firing monsters at 50m. Good one mate!”
“Fame and glory, mate. Fame and glory!” replied Sully.
“Fuck your fame and glory” said Drew with a bit of venom. “I’d settle for safe and sound right now. We’ve done our bit and now we’re up front and centre again. Next time take your cue from me and shut it.”
Sully could see that his best friend was deadly serious and he knew better than to make some flippant remark when he was in this type of mood. “Sure Drew, I will. Sorry mate.”
Chapter 9. Pulton 1 1900, 24 May.
Drew and Sully in position 1 were talking about who should replace the striker in their favourite football team when the noise of an explosion was heard from up in the shaft.
“Maam, this is Taleen. We’ve just heard an explosion up in the shaft. Probably the first of the baffles.”
“Right. The OC reckons it will take them about two hours to get through all of them. There’s six baffles. So you should hear six explosions. Start counting and let me know when you hit six.”
“Roger that” said Taleen.
Almost exactly twenty minutes later the second explosion was heard and reported. Everyone settled into the rhythm of explosions. Sully even went to sleep while Drew took the first watch. Sully may have heard the third, fourth and fifth explosions but didn’t move a muscle. However, on the sixth Sully raised his head and looked at Drew.
“Time to switch on mate?” said Sully.
“I reckon.”
Liz Adair came forward to their pit. “They will probably now try and demolish the elevator. With that blast door you probably won’t hear them but let me know if you do.”
“How long?” asked Drew.
“Depends. Simons reckons at least 2 hours” responded Liz.
“Beauty. Time for my nap” said Drew and flashed his lieutenant a smile. She smiled back as she shook her head and then moved back down the tunnel.
“Wake me at 2250” directed Drew.
“Sure mate” said Sully.
Drew leaned back into the side wall and closed his eyes. The fatigue of the day and especially of the combat pulled him in straight away. He started seeing Bolin’s helmet all filled up with blood. He felt the same shock and revulsion he felt when he first saw it. He made an agitated “huh!” sound and shook the upper part of his body. He knew he would be seeing this again. It was one of those images you don’t easily forget.
Sully placed his hand on Drew’s shoulder. Drew settled and eventually dropped off into sleep. Occasionally he would mutter something in his disturbed slumber and Sully would again place his hand on his shoulder to settle him.
While Sully watched and listened his thought too returned to their time in the tunnel. He couldn’t help think how close he had come to getting fried by the beam attacks, fragged by the grenades that were popping all around him and shot by the enemy pulse guns.
His mate D
rew was a diehard atheist. But Sully held to the view that there was something greater guiding things. He carried a crucifix that his mother had given him, on a chain around his neck. It had been in the family for centuries. Drew used to rib him about it. ‘What do you wanna follow that superstitious stuff for?’ Drew would goad him. But Drew gave up when Sully refused to take the bait.
Sully pulled the crucifix out and took this opportunity to thank his God for keeping him safe and to protect him in the hours ahead. He also asked for protection for Drew and apologised for Drew’s attitudes, adding that he was a good person at heart and surely that must count for something. He gave it a kiss and then tucked it back into his suit.
Half an hour later Sully started to hear a high pitched whining sound. He immediately thought of a drill. He let Drew sleep on. “Taleen” he hailed.
“Yes?”
“Come up here. I can hear something coming from the shaft.”
Taleen arrived a minute later. “Yeh, I see what you mean” she said. “Sounds like a drill. What do you reckon?”
“Yeh. They’re probably setting the charges for the elevator” responded Sully.
“Maam, this is Taleen.”
“Yes go ahead”
“We’re hearing what sounds like drilling. We reckon they must be setting the charges for the elevator” informed Taleen.
“Roger. Let me know when it stops.”
“Will do” said Taleen and she looked across at Drew, who was still in a fitful sleep. “He OK?” she asked.
“He’ll be right. Don’t worry.”
“OK let me know when the drilling stops.”
“Sure!”
The drilling continued nonstop.
Liz Adair had informed Chuck and Art and now she sat back on the foldaway chair in the room 200m down the tunnel. She felt impotent. If only we could intervene somehow, she thought. She hated this waiting where the initiative rested with the enemy. She had no control and she never liked that.
Her natural tendency was therefore to do something that would wrest control or at least give the semblance of doing something. But she had wrestled with this tendency all through her relatively short career. She realised early that it would be her undoing and so she sought to control it. She wore a set of mala beads on her left hand. At times like this she would rub her thumb and forefinger over each bead in turn and repeat the mantra her father had given her.
He was a spiritual man and while she didn’t have his faith she had recognised the benefits of this simple practice. It helped calm her mind. It slowed its processing and centred her. She soon found herself focussed back on Polaris in the family home. She couldn’t wait to get out of it nine years ago and had embraced the opportunity for travel and adventure that Fleet service offered. Now she would give her right eye to be back there again.
She remembered her father’s story about the man who travelled the world in search of his destiny only to find it back from where he had started. At the time she had dismissed it as yet another one of his homilies. He was just trying to get her to carry on his law practice and she had not wanted a bar of it. But in this moment she realised that the Fleet was not really where she was best suited.
She had had enough of death and dying. It wasn’t as though she was afraid or not capable. No she had proved herself already. It just wasn’t fulfilling anymore.
She didn’t want to do law but she did want to do something constructive. She wanted to build something rather than destroy. Yes she would like to start a family too, before it became too late. Fleet service made that nigh impossible. ‘If I get out of this alive’ she thought ‘I’m going to resign my commission.’
Chapter 10. Pulton 1 2240, 24 May.
“Maam, the drilling’s stopped” advised Taleen.
Liz let go of her mala beads. Right she told herself. All I have to do is survive this lot. “Thanks” she replied. “2nd Pl stand to!” Then she hailed her CO. “Sir, the drilling’s stopped and we’re standing to.”
“OK, stay sharp Liz. I’ll have the rest of the forces stand to as well” Chuck replied. “All troops at the main entrance stand to. The drilling has stopped. We should hear an explosion any minute now. Then they’ll descend the shaft and blow the blast doors. We must be ready to take out their battle shuttle straight away at the base of the shaft. We must block that shaft.”
Sully shook Drew, who had fallen into a deeper, quieter sleep. He didn’t wake up, so he shook harder. This time he got through and Drew blurted out “what, what?”
“Stand to, mate. The drilling’s stopped” said Sully.
“Right oh” responded Drew trying as hard as he could to shake himself awake. “Did I miss anything?”
“Not really. All the action’s ahead of us mate.”
But nothing happened. No explosions. No noise. Nothing. Half an hour passed before they heard anything. It didn’t sound like a large explosion at all. Rather it was a more like a rolling series of little thuds. There was no obvious movement on the blast doors.
“Maam, we can hear something happening here. It sounds like a rolling thunder.”
“I’m coming” said Liz. She ran forward to position one and got down behind their shield and listened. Sure enough it sounded like a rolling thunder. But Liz knew better. “Sir, they’ve fired their charges on the elevator” she advised Chuck.
“Close the T2 blast doors” he ordered. The large blast doors 400m down the tunnel began closing leaving the sole Trojan forward to engage the enemy shuttle.
“Pls 2 and 3 suit up” Chuck ordered his front line defenders in the now sealed tunnel section facing the elevator shaft. “Tango 2 are you ready?” he asked.
“Ready Sir”
“Pl 1 ready?”
“Ready Sir.”
“Pl 2 ready?”
“Ready Sir.”
While everyone on this side of the shaft was ready, it was not so on the enemy’s side. After ten minutes, even Sully and Drew began to lose focus.
“What’s with these guys? Can’t they get their act sorted?” said Sully. “I want to get this show over and get back to some sleep.”
“Too right mate” agreed Drew.
“Shoosh” ordered Liz who was now lying down behind their pit. She had heard something but what was it. It sounded like….thrusters! “They’re coming down the shaft now!” she hailed. “Stay sharp you two and don’t miss. I don’t want to have to scrape off your sorry asses from the tarmac here.”
Drew looked around at her and saw the sheer determination in her eyes. He was not going to mess with that. “We’re right Maam. You better get back.”
Liz agreed and left at a run. She reached the doorway to her room just as the blast doors started to bow in the middle.
“Blast doors bowing” called out Taleen. She turned to see Miko leaning into his quanto. She checked again that her rocket launcher was ready as did Sully in position 1. Drew had his rifle up too.
“About time” called out Drew.
The doors began to buckle and crack. The sound of tearing metal grated the ears of Sully and Drew and they were 50m away. They both instinctively got lower into their pit. Drew checked his helmet was on tight, even though he knew it was.
Then in a great hiss the molten material was spewed forth in a line down the tunnel, dropping twenty metres short of their pit. But Sully could feel the heat. He wasn’t sure he could stand it. But then the beam stopped and his helmet was buffeted from behind as the atmosphere was sucked out and up the tunnel in a tremendous rush. The force of the air rushing out knocked Drew’s head forward onto the edge of the pit. He hadn’t braced for it. He knew he had to ignore that and pop his head up to look.
Sully was already up and bringing his rocket launcher to his shoulder. He was all concentration now. His world was centred on the gap in the blast door. With the exhaling atmosphere went all the dust and shit that clouded their vision. There it was the front of the enemy battle shuttle. Its three metre height filled the entire shaft
opening.
Sully pulled the trigger but it wasn’t his round that hit the enemy shuttle first. Tango 2’s 80mm pulse cannon beat him to it. The enemy vehicle shuddered with the impacts as two rockets and five cannon rounds ripped into it. There was no further movement, no beam attack, no enemy soldiers, no noise, nothing.
No one dared say anything for a full minute.
“OK that’s all folks. Show’s over” quipped Sully and he blew non-existent smoke from the end of his rocket launcher barrel like a cowboy.
Everyone else was still expecting something to happen. ‘It couldn’t be that easy’ thought Liz. “Button it Sully. Everyone stay focused. No one is to stand down till I say so.”
They waited and waited. Another fifteen minutes passed before Liz came forward. She got down behind Sully and Drew’s shield and listened but couldn’t hear anything. It was always more difficult when suited up but she was finally convinced that there was nothing happening.
“Sir, there’s nothing going on here. Can’t hear or see anything. I propose sending a scout into the base of the shaft” she advised her CO.
“Go ahead” replied Chuck.
“Bucknell, Krankski to me” ordered Liz.
Trooper Bob Bucknell looked to his pit buddy Corporal Wanda Krankski with real fear in his light green eyes. His slight but wiry body wasn’t shaking but he was scared nonetheless. “Why us?” he questioned.
“Come on Bob. It’s you lucky day” said Wanda. “First human to go inside an enemy battle shuttle. Not quite Neil Armstrong, but hey it’s not a bad story to tell your kids.”
Wanda by contrast was a big woman. Her penchant for eating, not to mention drinking, meant she was in a constant struggle to keep her weight in check. She had a street-wise education but still had a good heart.
“I don’t have any kids and probably never will after this” winged Bob.
“You’re worse than an ol’ woman. Come on” and she pushed him forward.
When they closed on Liz, she pointed to the shuttle and said “Go forward, take it slow and keep talking about what you see and hear. If anything untoward happens. Hightail it back here. Got it?”
The Awakening: Book 1 of Warner's World Page 34
