Alien Arsenal

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  Amelia, down!

  With a thought my blade vanishes into my armor and I roll forward. A massive shockwave hits the Th’un I just killed blowing me upside down into the far wall twenty feet away.

  “Holy crap, they really aren’t concerned about collateral damage. Status on that door?” I roll over and push myself up glancing around to see where it came from. My HUD flashes the range to the shooter. One hundred and twelve feet. He’s carrying some kind of shoulder-fired mass driver. Well, screw that.

  “Smoke!” I kick in the Emdrive, flashing by the remaining three Th’un who’d been thrown back by their own guy. Canisters of aluminum coated fiberglass with phosphorus explode into purple smoke. Shouts fill the area as they look for me. A couple of plasma bolts skirt by me through pure luck.

  The door is open.

  “Excellent.” My boots spark on the deck as I come to a stop and run through. “Shut it!” The door flows closed behind me. The lift access is remarkably similar to an Earth elevator. I slap the control panel next to it allowing Epic local access.

  The lift is controlled by a central location, not unlike an air traffic control station. There are multiple elevators in the vacuum sealed tube coming and going at thousands of meters per second. I would need substantial time to seize control of the system and I am afraid we do not have that time.

  “Now you tell me.” I glance around scanning the environment. If the doors are vacuum sealed then it won’t be as simple as just forcing them open. I’m in the inner hub and the wireframe map shows me there are four levels about twenty feet each below me, and seven above.

  The door behind me flows open and I snap fire a particle beam through the open space. A guttural scream tells me I hit. The door flows shut and I drag the beam across the control panel in the hopes that it will keep it closed while I figure out how to get past this obstacle.

  “Epic, the shaft is a vacuum, right?”

  Correct. Inside is vacuum sealed to allow for speed without friction. This elevator is similar to the one Caltech has worked on for the last ten years. The only real difference is the Th’un have access to Animetal as we do not. I am working on a theory about their technology but I am not ready to share it yet.

  “Sounds good. Full power to the particle beam.” I leaped a few feet back, raised my wrist so the targeting icon flashed over the center of the ‘door’. With a mental impulse I trigger the beam. Heat levels rise but they’re negligible with the new alloy. The blue beam burns through the air, full power striking the door in a flash of sparks. The door glows as the heat transfers to the material around the strike zone.

  “Is it working?”

  Slowly.

  Loud thuds emanate behind me as the Th’un on the other side of the now disabled door try to break it down. It won’t take them long to find an alternate route or have security come at me from this side.

  Light flares on the door and I barely have time to trigger my boots to molecular bond with the floor when the door implodes with a bang. In an instant the air sucks out of the station along with Th’un, computers and anything else not nailed down. Emergency bulkheads flow closed ten feet to either side sealing off the breach. I let the boots go and kick in the Emdrive, diving right for the destroyed door and down into the heart of the beast.

  The interior of the tube connecting the elevator to the third planet stretched out before me almost twenty-three thousand miles down to the surface. I trigger the Emdrive and punch it. They emit a high pitch whine as energy from the ZPFM dumps into them at a prodigious volume. Without atmosphere there is no sound barrier and we shoot past a thousand miles an hour in a few seconds.

  “Epic, full forward sensors. Angle the kinetic shields into a tight wedge and stretch them out as far as you can while dumping as much power into them as the suit can handle!”

  As I speak, data flies across my HUD with the reconfigured numbers. I have sensors on the HUD but the speed I need to go, to traverse the elevator quickly, precludes my natural abilities. Usually, I don’t go faster than four thousand miles per hour in atmosphere unless I’m trying to break orbit. In space I can go as fast as I want without worrying about hitting things. But at five thousand miles per hour, I won’t even have time to react if—

  An explosion envelopes me and debris pings off my back where the open end of the wedge is.

  You just hit an elevator. I believe it was all cargo. The wedge sheered it in half.

  Sensors show the debris falling behind me, but it will drop for hours whereas I want to be on the surface asap. I dodge right over to the other side of the hundred foot wide compartment. It’s divided up into four quadrants, each one with its own elevator space. I imagine two are used for down and two for up.

  Another explosion lights up my world, the shockwave throws me into the side with a crash. Sparks stream off my armor where I slide along the tube. I manage to ease back over. The HUD highlights my speed to show the numbers flip over to five-thousand miles per hour.

  I do some mental math… “Epic, at this speed we’ll still take four hours to get—” I’m interrupted by another car as it slams into my kinetic shields. The emitters flash yellow showing stress. They weren’t really designed for this and I didn’t count on this many cars in the shaft.

  Four hours and twenty minutes. The emitters are already at tolerance levels if you want to go faster you will need an alternate route.

  I grin. Throwing my arms forward I trigger an ‘all-stop’. The Emdrive goes into full power mode bringing me to a halt. Mentally I call my Sword of Doom and it snaps into existence at the end of my hand.

  Amelia, if you are thinking of doing what I think you are doing… you will kill everyone on board the elevator.

  My grin fades for a second, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’m just not going to go fast enough in the shaft. The only reason we docked with the space elevator was to avoid detection as long as possible. That’s out the window now.

  “Epic, they know I’m here. They know who I am. They have to know why I’m here. I can’t give them four hours to prepare— or kill her. They could take her somewhere we can’t find. Had the Th’un not taken her, had they not attacked Earth, none of this would be happening. Everything that happens to them is their fault.”

  Their fault, Amelia, but your conscience. I do not wish to see you psychologically damaged for killing hundreds, even thousands of people.

  “I don’t want to Epic. But I will never forgive myself if Kate dies and I didn’t do everything I could to rescue her.”

  I understand. The Animetal tube is one foot thick, you will need to extend the blade by another six inches and make the haft as thin as possible.

  Mentally controlling the armor is still weird. With the polymolecular circuits and the neural-interface I can control every molecule. Combined with preprogrammed combinations, I can make my sword, change the shape of the suit, even add new mechanical weapons like the mass driver as needed. It’s how I managed to make it into a Full Metal bikini to walk around in. Not that anyone will ever see me like that! Well, maybe Luke. That thought heats my cheeks and sends a tingle through my stomach.

  Focus Amelia!

  I do. Narrowing the blade so it is the same width as the cutting edge, it practically turns invisible. I stick the point against the nearest part and push. Not just with the suit’s strength but with the Emdrive as well. The drive whines and I grunt from the exertion as the blade sinks centimeter by centimeter into the wall.

  There is a car approaching, brace for impact.

  I brace. The car hits going hundreds of miles an hour. Unlike when I was flying down, I don’t have anything but the kinetic shields to keep me in place. My hands are molecularly bonded to the sword which slashes vertically up through the hull in a shower of sparks as the momentum from the exploding cart pushes me up a hundred feet.

  With no air to transmit sound I don’t hear the telltale sound of groaning metal, but I see it. The line I dug through the wall sheers open, a shockwave of
rolling metal, something that should not roll, rounds the whole shaft spreading away from the point of impact. The hundred-foot-long tear twists and spreads like a zipper. In seconds the whole thing is ripping apart.

  The sword vanishes in my hand and I shoot for the new hole in the elevator.

  “Tenth floor, perfume, underwear, women’s clothing,” I say as we zoom out of the hole. The Emjets kick in and I pour on the speed. In less than a minute we shoot past five thousand miles an hour.

  Six thousand.

  Heat builds up on the outside of the suit as we plunge into the atmosphere.

  Seven thousand.

  Amelia, this is the fastest velocity I would recommend for re-entry. Even with the heat tolerances of the armor, a single mistake could result in your death.

  I glance at the external temperature. It is approaching three thousand degrees, the old suits temp tolerance. At three thousand and one, the MKIII would turn to slag with me in it. According to the mass spectrometer, Animetal has a tolerance of five thousand degrees.

  “I have to save her, Epic. I can’t worry about safety margins!” Mentally I urge more power into the Emdrive.

  Eight thousand.

  Nine.

  Ten thousand miles per hour.

  Superheated air turns to fire around the suit, my face shield polarizes to protect my vision as I become a living fireball streaking down through the sky at speeds far faster than a meteorite at this altitude. The suit shakes as we plunge through multiple sound barriers as we hit the atmosphere.

  For ten minutes the suit is locked up, plunging farther down while heat builds up and rolls off behind me. I sweat, but not because the temperature, inside the suit is perfectly fine. In the moments of inactivity I worry about Kate. About what they are doing to her and what they’ve done.

  Ten seconds to deceleration, hold on to your lunch.

  “Why did you say that? I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”

  It has only been eighteen hours you big baby.

  “Epic!” Then the punch hits me. I grunt as he throws thrust forward, combined with us hitting the thickest part of the atmosphere. I clench my jaw and try to focus through the vibrations.

  “Epic? H-ho-w m-uch long-er-er?”

  Five seconds…

  I count down silently and when I hit one the vibrations stop, my faceplate clears and I see a barren landscape only a few miles below me.

  Amelia, we have a problem.

  Crap, I knew things were going too easy. “What?”

  The suit did hold up to the temp but you lost almost three millimeters of the top of the armor.

  Panic rushes through me. Am I space-worthy? How will I get Kate home?

  The suit’s superstructure is fine, had it compromised it we would not be here to speak about it. The particle beam emitter is down. You cannot use it.

  “Frag. Sword and board, got it. How close are we?”

  Thirty seconds. I am tapping into the external network now. The planet is on alert. A distress call has gone out. The upper part of the space elevator is adrift in space. Without the counterweight the ‘shaft’ is collapsing and falling to the planet.

  The HUD clears and I can see again. The massive shaft stretches up into the sky thousands of feet… and it’s all coming down.

  Right on top of the complex I need access in so I can find Kate.

  “Floor it!” All four Emdrives kick in with a massive whine and a surge of gravity The air around me shakes as we blast through the sound barrier toward our target.

  As strong as the suit is you cannot let the shaft fall on you. Those sections weigh thousands of tons. You would be killed.

  It’s easy for him to say. As we approach, the shaft sways, sections buckle, plates explode from the side as sheering forces shred the foundation.

  I don’t have much time.

  Inside the base of the space elevator is a mass of panic. Hundreds of Th’un stream out of the complex on foot as well as air cars, and even some small ships. An army of drones attacks the base of the shaft as if they are trying to shore it up but they don’t understand the extent of the damage. Laid end-to-end the length of the shaft is the entire circumference of this disgusting planet. And the whole thing is coming down.

  In a way, this is awesome. They are too busy panicking and fleeing to stop me. I pick a window and fly toward it. The complex is an eight-story squat mass of a building with the space elevator shaft sticking out of the center. The whole complex is two square miles in diameter with each level starting a few hundred feet in from the edge in an alien version of a step pyramid.

  Automated defenses pop up from the roof and spit small streams of green plasma at me. They’re too slow. At almost a thousand miles an hour, and rolling like a mad woman, the computers can’t out think Epic. They end up firing where I was or guess wrong and fire in a place I never will be.

  I follow Epic’s course through the oncoming fire.

  “Do we need to worry about their missiles?”

  Negative. They won’t have time to use them. I have found the computer center that connects this planet’s research stations. Interesting.

  I dodge hard, grunting from the sudden lateral g’s as three beams crisscross where I was. The building rushes up on me, throwing my hands out, I brake hard. Emdrives whine loud enough to break glass but they slow me down. I snap my hand out bringing the Sword of Doom into play and slash through the glass.

  Shards of razor-sharp glass explode inward and I’m inside.

  They are incredibly paranoid. No one division collates their data. They have no central networking, no AIs, nothing that could compromise security. Several of their research divisions are working on the same technology, each re-inventing the wheel every time they fail. Their level of paranoia is quite impressive.

  “Alien psychology later, Kate now. Which way?”

  Inside the base is a lot like all their other structures. Drab brown walls, harsh lights, metal floors and the flowy doors. I guess their paranoia about having their research stolen might account for some of the backward tech they use. Not to mention the lack of exploiting it.

  A yellow line springs into existence on my HUD.

  Follow the yellow brick road.

  I don’t have to follow it far. The first door opens to Epic’s override and a squad of heavily armed troopers are barking orders at civilians… who are all on their knees with their hands above their heads. No one notices me enter from behind. The yellow brick road leads off to the right, farther in the complex, I can’t help but wonder what is going on in here, but I can’t spare time for curiosity.

  I trigger my flares with a single thought as I take off in a shot toward my target. A hundred micro-flares explode from my hips bouncing around the room like firecrackers. No one even sees me shoot through the far door. The high-pitched whine of their sidearms echoes behind me as they shoot at a target they can’t see.

  The building shakes, cracks appear on the walls and glass shatters as I pass through the next section. On my HUD, the path has a distance to go in feet, only seventy more to go.

  The shaft has torn free from the building. External sensors have multiple fragments of the shaft re-entering orbit. The sky is filled with falling debris. You do not have much time. The lower part of the shaft will fall straight down.

  The last door flows open into a giant computer hub. I readily identify network servers, workstations, data lines, it could almost be an IT department on Earth. The room is a hundred feet wide and seventy long, my spatial sensors tell me. Four Th’un, not in battle armor, are busy running degaussers over the servers. As each one waves the device over a server it explodes in a shower of sparks.

  “No!” I lash out with my IP cannons, blue ions flash through the air with their sandpaper sound blasting the first Th’un I see in the back. He crashes forward into the server, knocking it out of the housing it rested in and onto the floor in a shower of sparks and skittering electronics.

  The other three turn to m
e and shout something in their guttural language. They may not have body armor but they all pull wicked looking pistols from their backs and take aim.

  I’m faster. Another IP blast takes the closest one down before he can fire. The other two open fire. Green beams slice through the air where I was a second before leaving scorch marks on the wall behind me. Another IP cannon blast takes down the third one.

  The ceiling is fifteen feet tall, not enough room for them to fly, if they could, but plenty for me, and he won’t shoot any more servers trying to hit me.

  Except he’s not shooting at me, he’s lumbering toward a large red button on the wall. Well, I don’t have to be a genius to figure out what that means.

  I fire off a full power IP cannon at him. The energy slams him square in the back flattening his face against the metal floors.

  “Epic, which one?”

  A glowing arrow appears on my HUD over the far server. I jet over and drop to the floor in a shower of sparks as I skid to a halt in front of it. The magnetic induction works just fine as my hand comes into contact with the metal housing of the server. Epic throws a countdown on the screen as he searches their database. It’s ticking down from thirty seconds, this is going better than I thought.

  “Is that how long until you find Kate?”

  Negative. It is how long until the seven-mile section of shaft crashes into the building.

  The counter hits twenty and I start sweating. Beads form on my temple working their way down my chin.

  “Uh, Epic? Can you find her before we get squashed?”

  He doesn’t answer. The whole building shakes, dust rains from the ceiling as sections of the roof shift rending huge cracks through the structure. Light streams through one. The wall on the far side splinters as fragments explode outward.

  Ten seconds.

  “Epic…”

  Five seconds.

  A roaring sound echoes down from above. The lights flicker and die. My HUD instantly switches to starlight letting me see with very little ambient light but casting a green hue over the room.