The Guardians of Sol

by Spencer Kettenring

  Our visitor was obviously female even dressed as ruggedly as she was. Question was: Why come to our cave? Our contact was supposed to be a middle-aged carpenter. I waited, flanked by my massive compatriots, for the woman to alter her course. She persisted in heading straight for us, though at a pace that could make my grandmother look hurried.

  “Don’t kill her when she gets here,” I told the guys crowding the entrance. I moved further back into the cave and helped myself to some of the delightfully horrid instant coffee some thoughtful soul had brewed up.

  A few minutes later, a slight looking young woman was escorted in front of me. I say she was slight looking because she was flanked by several hulking power armors. In reality, she was only a few inches shorter than me, with a cruel looking scar curling around the left side of her neck. I’m sure that it must have been a close call when she got that thing. Despite that, she was quite pretty, even with the irritation, frustration, and worry warring so obviously on her face. I glanced farther down the cave, Joshua was still asleep.

  I tossed a rock at Sandsmark, told him to go wake up the old guy. The youngster stifled a sigh and went to prod my fellow captain into wakefulness. In the meantime…

  “Good morning, Miss,” I began. “What can our merry little band do for you?” Joshua stumbled into me, took my cup, refilled it, and drained the damn thing in a single pull. This stuff was near to boiling and he didn’t even flinch. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you tell us who you are and why we shouldn’t truss you up in the back until we’re finished with our business on your fine island?”

  “Because I’m as close to a contact as you’ll be getting right now. We can’t find Finney anywhere; figure he’s either dead or captured. Maybe both.”

  “If you’re our contact, what’s the code?” I asked her.

  She sighed, and looked a bit perturbed, but still responded. “The sun warms the emerald isle in the morning.”

  “So that magic might fill it in the night.” I finished. “Damned weird pass phrase, but good enough for me. Joshua?”

  The older man shrugged and got another cup of coffee. “Alright good contact, where’s our target? What’re its defenses? How much manpower can they bring to bear on us once we get their attention? Are there any special forces in the area?”

  “The air field is about fifteen kilometers to the northeast. They have standard garrison of five knights and maybe thirty troopers. The nearest reinforcements are in Dublin, say… thirty minutes away.” She pulled a data wafer from who knows where, handed it to Joshua. “That wafer has all of the hard data that we’ve collected. We haven’t been able to confirm or deny any special forces in the area, but there have been rumors of a berserker rooming at the air field’s garrison. There is a ridge about half a kilometer away from the base that overlooks it. As far as we’ve been able to tell, they don’t have surveillance on it. It would be the perfect place to stage your assault.”

  Joshua tossed the wafer to one of his men, who plugged it into a port in his armor to sort the information.

  “Sounds good, we’ll sort things out and begin our operation soon,” Joshua said. “I hope you don’t mind if we insist that you stay here until we’re finished.”

  “I don’t mind at all. The IRA knows and respects paranoia well. We wouldn’t take the chance that you were enemy agents either, if our positions were reversed.”

  “Good. So tell us about this Finney of yours we were supposed to meet. When was the last time anyone saw him? Is there any chance he went over to the other side?”

  She developed a shocked look at Joshua’s suggestion. “Finney has been the backbone of this organization for over sixty years. He wouldn’t jump ship right before we were finally rid of British governance. It’s far more likely that he’s been killed. No one has seen him in two days, and the local government hasn’t made any noise about capturing a high-level terrorist, and you know they would if they had him. We’re just trying to find his body now.”

  “That is too bad. Not our problem, but too bad. You want some coffee while you wait? We have a pot brewing in the back.”

  *****

  We ran the data, figured out what we could. In the end, we decided that the majority of both squads would distract the enemy forces with a frontal assault. This would let a four man team slip in the back and take control of the anti-air turrets ringing the air field. I drew the straw to lead the second force.

  All twenty-four men hurried the fifteen clicks to the airfield, spread out so that not too much dust was kicked up by our movements. We rendezvoused behind the ridge the girl had described; there I left Haywire in charge of the remaining Thundermakers. I moved to the bottom of the ridge; Filch, Spicy, and Voodoo trailing.

  From there we double timed it to the southeast side of the base and crawled as close as we could to the perimeter fence under cover from the undergrowth. My team would move approximately one minute after the first explosion. We would then have 9 minutes to secure the AA turret controls and signal for our reinforcements. The Guardians, as well as the AEU were equally aware that the final battle was coming within the next few days, so a base so close to the enemy capitol with such a sparse defense set off all kinds of alarms. We had our objectives, but that didn’t mean we weren’t prepared for this mission to go FUBAR.

  The green dots on my HUD representing my men and the Fuzzy Bunnies began to move from their positions. A blue tinged explosion destroyed a… something, probably a motion detector since it immediately set off the base alarm. Must have been one of my men using their plasma weapons, since First Squad was still using conventional arms. Red dots appeared as the enemy squad on call rushed to investigate and defend.

  I moved from prone to crouched position, as the seconds ticked down.

  *****

  John Mace looked down on the AEU base. Everyone was waiting for the go signal. He had his IRIS sight in on a couple different sensors the bad guys had rigged up. It was too easy to fall into the us versus them mindset. Squatter was fiddling with the Bloodmoon shield he’d picked up in Rome when they’d taken out an enemy general. John had replaced his original arm cannon with one of the Stormhunter’s plasma bows. In fact, just about everyone in the squad had picked up some customized gear.

  Joshua gave the signal. John let loose with his cannons, setting off the base alarms. Fuzzy Bunnies flew down the ridge wall, firing explosive rounds at buildings and rushing enemies. John kept his team on top of the ridge, firing down.

  The first squad cut down the first wave of enemies without breaking a sweat. A minute later one of the rumored Berserkers reared his ugly head. Clad in ten foot power armor, with extra robotic arms, Berserkers were generally feared on any battlefield because of their size and ferocity. Wielding four eight-foot long blades, this beastie rushed towards a pair of Fuzzy Bunnies.

  Normal people would have turned tail and run. Hell, normal soldiers would have turned tail. With the First squad, it wasn’t hard to imagine the grins on their faces as they boosted around the giant. Instead of firing on the Berserker, which would have been fairly useless, the two men drew their heat blades and started dicing the thing to pieces. Its blades never even came close to either of the brightly colored Castigars.

  *****

  My counter hit zero, I ripped through the weak chain link fence. My team charged towards the base’s command center, our way completely clear given the lovely distraction to the north.

  One of the commanding knights stepped out from the barracks directly in front of the charge. I unslung my Spartan shield and slammed the man through the wall. Behind me, Spicy popped a shot into the fallen man.

  I didn’t feel that there was time for subtlety, I pulled my favorite new pistol from its spot on my belt harness, and put a couple explosive rounds through the command center’s nearest reinforced wall to weaken it. Bracing myself behind my shield, I rammed through the wall. I holstered my pistol and drew my hammer.

  “IRIS, pull up building schematics,” I st
arted moving down the hall, “Spicy, take point. Filch, make sure your intrusion software is ready. Ok, looks like we’re three levels below our target. Voodoo, watch our rear. We have to make this fast.”

  Spicy dove backwards from the intersection as shots spanged off of his armor. “I think we have company, sir.”

  “Very astute. Give them a warm welcome.”

  He laughed and stuck his left arm around the corner, and let loose an unfocused stream of plasma. He’d picked the arm up from a fallen Dragonsflame after an intense firefight just outside of Berlin. The screams following the attack let us know that our company was now well done.

  I took point, and swung my hammer into the few remaining foes. It took me a moment, but I did notice the spreading flames.

  “Could have been a little more discriminating with the burn, Spicy.” I told him. “Voodoo, douse the hall with some of your cold juice. We need the building intact. I’ll take point.”

  The flames and screams must have attracted some attention, because I had some morons taking pot shots at me after I turned the next corner. I was really going to have to have some words with our young informer, there were far more defenders here than the three or four squads she told us about. I unloaded a few rounds of my PMC into them, but a grenade knocked me on my ass, and through a wall. And into a hidden elevator shaft. Remember what I said about my questionable luck? There was the sound of a few more plasma rounds, and then silence.

  “Hey Boss, you uh, coming back up here? We still have a job to do you know,” Filch called down to me.

  “I have a feeling that something is off down here. You know, since the elevator shaft was hidden by a wall. You guys go on ahead. And don’t forget to shoot down any enemy shuttles coming from Dublin.”

  I ripped the hatch from the top of the elevator box and dropped down.

  *****

  John had gone strictly down to using his PMC to pin down the various knights and footmen still streaming from the barracks and command center on the base. IRIS had the count at a hundred forty-six and climbing. Damn IRA was a lot more useless than the Bloodwolf boys had led him to believe.

  At least Gripe was happy. His PMC had a custom sniper mode built into it, and he was sitting in a grand old oak tree just picking off targets, whistling the most annoying tune John had heard in a long time. They called him Gripe not because he liked to complain, but because of the effect he tended to have on everyone but Dumper.

  The rest of the boys were having fun wading in the violent melee around the perimeter of the base. Something changed though, enemy units were falling back. There was no reason for them to fall back. Even with the casualties, they still outnumbered the Castigars by at least three or four to one.

  Then the hidden auto-guns started firing. It was a trap. John wasn’t going to have any of that. He activated his PEC and started charging the plasma bow on his arm. The bow could produce a bolt about as destructive as one from the PEC about once every few seconds on its own. Connected to his power core the bow could unleash a bolt as fast as he could hit the firing stud.

  When the first Fuzzy Bunny got hit, the rounds knocked him off balance, and the rest of them flew away in uneven patterns. The few Thundermakers in the melee took cover behind shields or the nearest building, and tried to find a good angle for attack.

  John aimed his bow and PEC at two different turrets and let them loose at the same time. There were two lovely blue-hued explosions, and John allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk inside his armor.

  When the dust cleared, the turrets were still completely intact. John swore in a very ungentlemanly fashion. One of the Fuzzy Bunnies got a rocket off, and it didn’t do anything to the turret either. John swore some more. The damn things were mag-shielded. Nothing in the intel said the base had a power source capable of something like that. Damn the Venators, and damn the IRA. Maybe something of a more melee nature would work…

  *****

  The hallway outside of the elevator wasn’t very well lit, not that it mattered with the visual enhancements available from my visor. Since the shaft was hidden, I was going with the assumption that I had already passed the worst of any security measures that might be in place.

  There was only one door in the corridor. I proceeded carefully, ran through the various spectrums available, but the door was completely shielded; I didn’t even get a thermal reading off of it. It was worse than a blind door. I affixed my shield to my back and reloaded my pistol with armor piercing rounds. I pushed the door slowly.

  It opened into a huge open chamber filled with tanks. There were no scientists, engineers, technicians, or soldiers in the chamber. Curious, I looked into one of the liquid volumes. I wasn’t entirely surprised when I discerned a grotesque human figure inside. Shocked for sure, but not terribly surprised. We had found similar labs all across Europe during the campaign.

  I continued down the catwalk to another room, this one filled with beds and several drugged, vivisected bodies. I felt sick and angry. This entire enterprise stank of a sick and twisted mind. I passed through this room as quickly as I could and came into an office complex. Here I finally did see a few people cowering under their desks. More importantly, the spiky-ridged figure of a Centurion passed through one of the doorways adjoining the room. He didn’t see me.

  Centurions and AEU researchers working together, intriguing. I pointed my pistol at one of the cowering workers. “What were you doing here?”

  “Research: bio-enhancements and genetic manipulation. We were just trying to help humankind reach their potential. We were given some starting points and raw data, and we went from there. Please don’t shoot us, we’re just the technicians.”

  “I won’t shoot you unless you give me a reason. Stay where you are, I’m sure someone else will love to sort this entire travesty out,” then to IRIS, “Initiate a remote link and download as much data from these computers as you can before these idiots delete it.” I went after the Centurion.

  And I found him waiting for me. “You will regret finding this facility, you filth. Now be good enough to die for me,” He told me in heavily accented standard. Vaguely reminded me of Russian mixed with some Scots-Irish, maybe a little Afrikaans.

  He came at me with those strange recurve swords the bastards were so fond of. I unloaded my revolver into him, making a few dents, and cracking his visor. Unfortunately, his angled armor kept any of the shots from wholly connecting. I dove backwards, dodging his blow, and came up with my shield in my left hand, hammer in my right.

  I charged him, shield first. He dodged, and we turned back to back before separating again. I blocked one of his swords with the haft of my hammer, and the other with my shield. I kicked out and he rolled backwards. We stared each other down for a minute. I clicked my jaw, activating the hammer, and then switched it to affect the same alloy of the swords I had picked up from the Centurion ship.

  “Download complete,” IRIS informed me. “All available computer systems have been copied and indexed. Armor hard drive ninety-seven percent full. Recommend system purge at first convenience.”

  Of course, as soon as I was distracted the centurion decided to attack me again. I caught most of his attacks on my shield, dodging whatever the shield missed. He was good, this mysterious man, but I had a lot more experience than I used to. In fact, I had two Table Knights since Greece to my credit.

  I slammed my hammer into one of his swords, and it shattered just as I had hoped. I bent to one knee, and hooked my hammer behind his ankle and pulled. He fell and I whipped my hammer against his other sword. Disarmed, He put his empty hands up. Crap. He’d be a very valuable prisoner, of course, but I didn’t have anything to restrain him. If he’d forced me to kill him, everything would be so much simpler.

  “IRIS, sampling spike,” and a spike came out of the bottom of my hammer. I knelt down on the Centurion and stabbed the spike into the thickest part of his chest armor. The spike sent out a rotating EM field to determine the alloy’s make up. It immed
iately came up as a match for the swords I had just shattered. This made me marginally happier.

  The man started to struggle again, but I hit his chest with my hammer, and immediately his struggles weakened considerably as the armor shattered.

  Something hit the back of my head and I practically flew off of my captive. I’d been a little too intent on the task at hand, even with a 360 degree wrap around view I didn’t see my assailant. Of course, lying stunned face down, I did finally take a look, and unsurprisingly, it was another Centurion. The surprising thing was that he hadn’t killed me.

  “Stop messing around, we’re going to be swamped with Guardians soon, we have to get out of here, get back to the fleet,” The new one told my now former captive as he helped him up. “Come, we must get out the back door.”

  And then they were gone. I stood up slowly, my head pounding, and gathered up my weapons. There was no sign of the Centurions, and as I made my way back to the elevator shaft, I noticed that the cowering technicians were now a bunch of quite dead technicians. That was too bad; they could have given us some good information. The people in the tanks were untouched though. I think there was a good chance that our original contact Finney was somewhere in there.

  I jet jumped back up the shaft, and followed the schematics and trail of bodies to the control tower, where Filch was patched into the computer system. I arrived just in time to see several of the anti-air turrets turn to the north east and begin firing at AEU shuttles arriving with enemy reinforcements.

  “Has anybody called our side for reinforcements yet?” I asked.

  “Why would we do dat, mon? We be winnin!” Voodoo replied. I sighed.

  I looked out one of the windows and noticed First Squad and my boys getting pounded by some auto-guns on the perimeter. “I guess someone forgot to tell the guys outside, Voodoo. Spicy, get on the horn and tell Joshua to activate the beacon. As soon as the first shuttle touches down we can consider this mission accomplished.”