by Aer-ki Jyr
“There was an extensive network of caverns running through the mountain that we expanded upon,” the slightly shorter Calavari explained. “They made it easier to hollow out the mountain, which was why this location was chosen in addition to the geographic surroundings. We wanted cover but with enough room to maneuver the fighters about and not get them boxed in during an attack. The dome of the mountain is sufficiently thick to protect the base from orbital assaults, and to maintain that thickness we had to dig down very far into the bedrock, which the caverns allowed us to access immediately.”
Mark suppressed a smile. Now they were getting somewhere. “Were all the caverns consumed during the construction?”
“Most were, but some ran deeper than the foundations needed to be. We sealed them off when we built over them.”
The Archon pointed a finger at Vornac. “I’ll bet you there’s something down in those caverns that the Nestafar want badly enough to sabotage the whole alliance, and that they dug down to confirm it before they launched the assault. The access shaft to the surface is just a bonus. Where are the sealed entrances?”
The Calavari reached its lower left arm up and scratched its wide chin, grimacing as it thought, then it reached down and highlighted half a dozen areas on the underside of the base.
“These are guesses, and I know there’s more than that, but I’m sure these are fairly accurate.”
Mark traced the line of the Nestafar tunnel, dipping his armored finger into the hologram and stopping where it intersected with one of the points. “There’s our mark.”
“Says Mark,” Boen added, immediately holding up his hands in apology, but he’d had to say it.
“10 man team,” the trailblazer said, letting it go. “Boen, pick your seven and grab Kara. We’re going in through their base.”
“It hasn’t been secured yet,” Vornac interjected. “The fighting has ground down into a stalemate.”
“I know, I’ve already cycled two Archon teams through there,” Mark explained, standing up straight and grabbing his helmet. “Time for a bigger push.”
Boen slid his helmet on and rushed out of the control room, leaving Mark alone with the Calavari. “The Nestafar want what’s in those caverns. Focus your men on the tunnel entrance in the maintenance areas. If we hit them hard they may call for reinforcements and give you an opening…or maybe the other way around.”
“It will be done,” the Calavari promised.
Mark nodded, put on his helmet, then began to organize a larger assault group via his helmet comm as he contacted the other races in the base.
“Stand clear,” Boen warned. He waited a pair of Time Lord heartbeats then walked around a corner in the Nestafar complex and hurled a small object sidearm towards a doorway guarded by barricades and half a dozen of their winged infantry. A moment later the Archon pressed a small detonator switch in his other hand and the Kiritas-inspired throwing mine exploded.
Kara and two other Archons followed Mark around the corner and proceeded to shoot the survivors, then kicked away the barricade debris and opened up the hall for the Scionate following them. The quadruped bit down on a jaw-stick and pumped another plasma round into one of the Nestafar on the floor for good measure as it walked over, then followed the Humans into a maintenance shaft that spiraled down several floors with various piping running the length, interspersed with an erratic walkway leading down to the floor.
“Stand aside,” the Scionate said, biting another button and causing its body armor to slide up over its neck and form a solid helmet with only two jewel-like eye slits showing. They glowed green in contrast to the yellow armor, then the alien jumped off the catwalk and down through the center along with the pipes, grabbing onto and sliding down them with his front paws.
Boen and Kara took off sprinting down the catwalk, zigzagging left and right as the sounds of weaponsfire manifested below. They moved down three flights before Kara hopped over the edge and fell to the floor, with Boen following her.
He hit hard, legs buckling, and rolled down onto his shoulder turning the fall into a somersault that ended on a dead Nestafar. That off balanced him for a moment, then he came up firing at the dozens of enemy troops around the base of the shaft. Kara was doing likewise with the Scionate ducking behind several pipes to avoid direct fire. It had already killed over a dozen, but its armor was badly damaged and couldn’t hold up to much more punishment.
It didn’t have to. After the pair of Archons came down more followed, dropping from the air as Protovic troops hurried down the catwalk behind them. All three species wore body armor, which was why Mark had requested them. The Protovic, especially, had wanted payback against the Nestafar and had been more than willing to lend a hand now that their own complex within the base had been secured.
“Dre’for?” Mark asked as the Nestafar began to retreat down two side hallways that led out of the shaft.
“I am alive,” the Scionate answered, shooting another before walking out behind Mark.
The Archon gave a hand signal and four Archons shot off down the left passage while he moved up on the right, fired twice, then sprinted ahead sensing an advantage. By the time Boen caught up to him he had three Nestafar down and was punching another into submission. It fell to the ground and Mark kicked its weapon aside before landing his knee on its chest and pinning it to the ground.
He waved Boen on by, then leaned forward as he and others moved down the hallway behind his back. The trailblazer pulled out his stinger pistol from his back rack and pumped three shots into the Nestafar’s midsection, rendering it unconscious.
“A prize?” Kel’sad asked, walking up beside him and looking down at the captive.
“No, just someone to gloat over after this is all over,” he said sarcastically. “Can you carry it up topside? My people will meet you there to take it.”
“As you wish, Human,” the other Scionate said, opening its face armor and gripping the Nestafar’s arm with its mouth, then rolling over on its side and lifting it up into what resembled a fireman’s carry, though the dynamics of which were a bit different for an armless quadruped. As it left with the Nestafar its den brother came up to join Mark, its armor pitted in several places.
“Lead on,” Dre’for said, with several dozen Protovic following him.
Mark jogged on ahead with the Scionate easily keeping pace with its long loping strides until they reached Boen and the others he’d sent on ahead as they pushed through another knot of Nestafar and into a large storage area. There they found a half dozen more which Mark and the other Archons took down before the others could get at them, all standing around a small hole dug into the floor.
The other group of Archons came in through an opposite entrance, apparently having broken through the Nestafar lines on their side, and joined him at the middle as he looked down into the cavern entrance. There was a thick layer of what vaguely resembled concrete that the Nestafar had drilled down through, then nothing but black below.
“No lights?” Boen asked, poking his head over the side.
“They see well in the dark,” one of the Protovic said as it walked up in its trim armored suit and also glanced down. “And they can fly, so I do not think we will find any way down by foot.”
“Can’t be that far down,” Kara said, walking up beside the pair. “This is just the tunnel, not the cavern, right?”
“Should be,” Mark confirmed.
“Well then,” she said, hopping off the edge and disappearing down into the dark.
Boen glanced at Mark.
“Sabers,” he said dismissively, then clicked on his comm. “How many pieces you in?”
“Just one sexy one, as normal,” she answered back. “Bit of a slide a couple meters down…and they do have lights, just not our spectrum.”
Mark saw a tiny white light wink on in the distance down at an angle underneath the floor beneath Boen’s feet that was Kara’s exterior light on her helmet. He switched his HUD to artificial overlay and also
picked up the infrared generators imbedded into the walls like gems or marker beacons. They cast a gentle glow on the tunnel, enough for him to see by, at least.
“You guys coming or not?”
Mark motioned to Boen and he jumped in, followed by the other Archons.
“Does your armor have lights?”
The Protovic troops nodded, as did the lone Scionate they had remaining with them, though the other should have been returning soon.
Mark let the rest of the Archons get a few steps ahead of him then he jumped in, immediately feeling his feet hit a gravel wash and slip out from under him. He slid down a sharp bank that leveled out on a curve and brought him to a standstill, whereupon he quickly got up and walked forward, flashing on his lights and turning off the infrared.
“What have you got, Kara?” he asked over the comm, for she was still at the head of a long, single file line of helmet lights ahead of him.
“Basic tunnel. Nothing interesting.”
“Hurry it up,” he warned, “those troops outside aren’t going to wait forever.”
“Hurrying,” she said, taking off at a light run with the others following suit behind her.
Mark joined in when the line reached him, with the Scionate and Protovic following up behind. The large cat-like alien’s distinctive four-beat steps stayed right behind him yet out of sight all the way up the tunnel until a flash of blue plasma marked the end of their brief trip. Two more followed it, then was responded to with a flash of red…then nothing.
“Pair of guards,” Kara reported. “I think we found the entrance.”
“Think?”
“Check your battlemap.”
“What am I looking at?” he said after nothing specific was showing up aside from the Archon icons and the tunnel.
“Nothing,” Kara answered. “Where’s the cavern on the Calavari scans?”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “Call me stupid. I completely missed that. It dead ends above us.”
“Well, stupid, I missed it too until now…but there is another opening here. A big one. It might be a stretch, but I’d hazard a guess that its sensor shielded.”
“Which direction?” he asked, coming up on the back of the other Archons as they were now walking forward and fanning out two and three wide.
“Straight down…and I don’t feel like jumping this time,” she said from the edge where she was looking up at the rough rock. “I think we’re at the bottom of the plug the Calavari put in. Some sort of solidifying liquid, patchy down here. They didn’t have to cut through much.”
“No need to jump,” Varn-1633 said. “The walls are climbable. There’s a series of ridges almost a meter deep and about 10 down from where I’m standing. Can’t see much beyond that.”
Mark nudged his way through the other Archons until he came up on the edge and looked down, adding his light to the others. He switched back over to infrared and got a much better view, for the entire chamber was glowing in it.
“Looks like the Calavari weren’t the first here after all,” he said, turning around and pointing to one of the Protovic. “You, come here. Tell me if you recognize this architecture. Can you see in infrared?”
“My suit can,” the Protovic said, stepping up next to Mark and looking down…then it started jabbering on in its native language and took a step back from the edge, looking as if it was worried it was going to fall in and be swallowed up.
“What?” Mark asked, staring helmet to helmet with the unsettled alien.
“Keepers,” was all it said, which prompted Dre’for to nudge his way forward and poke his armored head down into the hole. A deep, mechanical growl emanated from its suit that made even Mark twitch.
“What’s a Keeper?”
“An ancient race, Human,” the Scionate said, moving back. “One with magical technology. It was rumored that the Nestafar were once their subjects. If this was once their world they will stop at nothing to reclaim it.”
Mark looked down into the ridged cavern, his spidey senses tingling more than ever. “Enough technology to make them the dominant power in the region?”
“Yes,” Dre’for growled, “or enough to give the Alliance the power to defeat the Cajdital with ease.”
9
Ashley-810 sprinted down the Nestafar tunnel, climbing up the shallow incline with every step as she and four other Archons moved ahead of the Calavari and others that were also racing up towards the surface. The diggers were almost through to their reinforcements and she could see them ahead, barely a pinprick in the distance on her helmet’s infrared sensors. That spec was glowing with heat as it chewed through the mountain rock and compressed the rubble down into dense cubes that she had to keep running around or jumping over.
This last section of the tunnel was crude, cut out of the mountain in the past day with no Nestafar lights embedded in the walls and plenty of trash cubes lying around. The workers had abandoned all efforts at cleanup when the tunnel entrances had been discovered and the defenders had dug in to buy time. Now the machine were spitting out the chunks of compressed rock behind them with wild abandon as they raced to get through to the surface before the base defenders could catch up to them.
Ashley was breathing hard, harder than usual in her acolyte armor, both from the speed at which she was running, the distance of the tunnel, and the incline…but it was the regular jumps that were killing her, for some of the cubes had fallen together to form knee-high barricades that she and the others had to go over rather than around.
There were several more adepts behind them, but they hadn’t been able to keep up. Even a few acolytes trailed, but the four behind her were managing to stay in a loose formation and keying off her timing, both for jumps and for managing their ascent up towards the surface.
Just as they were getting close enough to feel the deep rumbling coming from the machine as it tore through the rock a bright light lit up her helmet, causing her to duck to the left and smack into the wall as a plasma blast, glowing fiery bright on her infrared, flew a few inches over her head and impacted the ceiling behind her.
She bounced off the wall, dragging her feet on the crushed gravel ground, and stumbled back into her run behind two of the other Archons. They continued charging up the underground hill as a few more plasma blasts came their way, looking as if they were being fired from a lone weapon…maybe a rear guard on the digging team. The Archon ahead of her to the left fired back, a pair of blue streaks flashing off ahead of them and into the back of the digger, missing the shooter but leaving two hot spots on the machine.
Just below them a lot opened up and kicked out another cube, which also glowed hot on the infrared. Two more followed it before another plasma blast came their way and Ashley finally was able to spot the shooter, hiding in a small covered booth on the left side of what looked like a single digging machine. She jumped another cube and sprinted at the highest speed she could manage, nudging between the other two Archons and pulling ahead as she hurdled another low wall/pile.
Almost there, she told herself, fighting the stress on her body. Sprinting uphill was hard enough, but she was carrying heavy armor and it dragged on her body more than normal, given that she’d been spending most of the past year in cockpits and doing her running through the halls of the base in casual uniforms.
Another plasma blast shot out, this one hitting her in the left shoulder. She snapped off a return shot that made the Nestafar cower back inside its booth as another pair of cubes got tossed out the back side. The entire machine then advanced two meters and stopped again, re-instigating the ground-shaking rumble of it tearing away at the rock, then a bit of steam emerged from the rear as water began to flow down underneath the machine and onto the hot cubes.
Groundwater…they must be getting close.
Ashley fired into the back of the machine, emptying 11 rounds inside of 5 seconds before she had to jump over another cluttered section. She was having to step around the cubes everywhere, literally dancing through th
em to keep moving as the concentration continued to increase, why she didn’t know, but there was no time to think and she kept firing into the back of the machine, melting through its covering and hopefully into some internal components.
Problem was, it was a digger designed to move through solid rock and was therefore unbelievably well reinforced, meaning they were going to have to pour a lot of plasma into it to stop it from breaking through to the surface.
A scattering of plasma orbs came from behind her whenever the other Archons had a clear shot, one of which finally nailed the sniper. The Nestafar took the hit to the head as it leaned out to fire again, with its body falling sideways down onto the growing puddle, on top of which another cube popped out and crushed one of its wings.
Ashley kept firing, trying to burn a hole into one spot on the backside all the way up till she got to the device…then she ducked into the booth and glanced at the controls. Nothing looked familiar so she just started jabbing buttons.
“Hell with it,” she said when nothing seemed to work. She pulled up her plasma rifle and blasted away at the control board.
The machine didn’t stop, but it did start a high-pitched whine, indicating that she’d managed to do something. The whine continued to increase, with no more cubes coming out from the back side, then finally there was a loud ‘thunk’ and the machine fell silent…hopefully irrevocably damaged.
“Woo,” Ashley said, stepping out of the booth and leaning against the flat backside of the digger as she breathed heavily. “That was close.”
“How far away are we?” Liara wondered.
“The map says…oh, that can’t be right,” Ashley said, double checking.
“Two meters,” Liara confirmed.
“They can blast through that from the outside,” the acolyte said, suddenly feeling a lot less confident. “I don’t see any dirt. How can we be 2 meters away?”
