by Vowron Prime
“Where did you send him to?”
“Somewhere far. Somewhere on the other side of the planet where your people wouldn’t be looking for him.”
Nova frowned, concerned.
“Don’t worry. While it’s a crapshoot without Midar, but I can still aim well enough not to send him into space, at least. Or into the ground. I think.”
He turned to face the icy cavern wall, relocating a hole big enough for both of them to walk through, ignoring Nova’s dumbfounded reaction.
“One last thing,” he said, turning back. “According to the terminal’s intel, there are forty-seven Dyn at this facility. Thirty military and the rest noncoms. The only way this has a shred of a chance of working is for us to get to the command center unnoticed.”
The angel nodded.
“That means I might have to kill some of your people, and it may not only be the military ones. I need a guarantee that you won’t interfere when the time comes.”
Nova’s face darkened, but she nodded nonetheless. “I understand. All I ask is that if you can refrain from killing without endangering us, please do so. I am not so naive to think that there will be no casualties.”
“All right. Then from here on out, it’s going to be strict radio silence. No talking unless it’s absolutely essential. I’ll have the energy dampener’s stealth field going the entire time, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I understand.”
“Then let’s do this thing.”
It’d been a while since MC had this level of intel ahead of an op, and he had to admit that it felt pretty darn good.
Eleven
The hours dragged in silence as the pair made their way through MC’s boring tunnel. He’d been moving chunks of rock in their path directly behind them, thereby sealing the passage from behind while simultaneously making forward progress.
It felt almost natural, once he’d gotten the hang of things—a bit like traveling within a small bubble underwater. Except instead of an ocean, they were surrounded by miles upon miles of cold black rock. Air was an issue, so he kept their bubble large enough to house enough breathable air for the duration of the journey. As opposed to a traditional tunnel, he was able to extend the stealth field around the entire pocket, thus eliminating their radar signature. Even if the Harvesters had ground-penetrating radar near the base, they wouldn’t notice a thing.
The magic orb illuminated their surprisingly porous surroundings. Water leaked down the bare walls, turning the surface glossy and the environment damp. Thunderous cracking noises rumbled from somewhere deep within the rock, like ice under a floe. The humid wetness might’ve felt refreshing, if it wasn’t so cold. On the other hand, another perk of their enclosed surroundings was that the trapped air eventually heated up from their body heat, making the journey bearable, if not pleasant.
Nova tapped him on the shoulder as she’d done dozens of times, pointing ahead and slightly upward to correct their course. She’d acted as their navigator, eyes glued to her terminal all the while. Holding up a hand, she indicated five more minutes until they reached the facility’s outer walls.
The entire transit gateway compound was buried deep underground; parts of it even lay on the ocean floor. It had given him the idea of boring a hole and entering from an unexpected direction, blazing a trail of his own.
The black rock ended abruptly at a reinforced white wall. When he used the relocator to take a chunk out of it, he found intricate honeycomb patterns inside. Apparently they’d arrived at the outer perimeter.
Glancing at each other, the two friends exchanged nods. He switched off the magic light, plunging their little room in darkness.
Go time.
Expanding the stealth field to cover the room beyond, MC relocated the last bit of the wall, teleporting into the blindingly bright room to scan the area for any hostiles—there were none. He relocated some of the outer wall material right behind the door at the far side of the room, barricading it instantly. Only then did he allow his eyes to clamp shut. The days of near-total darkness meant that the light flooding the room seared his eyes, a barrage of needles upon his optical nerves.
Deploying Midar within the stealth field, he quickly confirmed that they were the only ones present, apart from a single blind spot the ability couldn’t cover.
He took a moment to recover before relocating the doors of the room’s privacy stalls—empty. They had successfully breached… the bathroom.
According to Nova’s intel, every square inch of the facility was monitored—both visual and radar. Nothing got in or out without detection, which made complete sense for such a sensitive facility. As the lone teleporter on the planet, it was the Dyn lifeline, their only connection to the rest of their society. Which was exactly why it had to be destroyed.
Yet even advanced aliens were organic creatures, and it seemed they still had to do their business just like everyone else. The bathrooms were the only rooms in the entire facility that lacked visual monitoring. Sensors were present, but the dampener had that covered—their sensors would be flying blind.
Nova entered after he gave her the all-clear, making her way to a counter that lacked any sinks—apparently aliens had fancier sanitary sensibilities.
She placed her fingers on an adjoining wall and traced around, searching, staring intently at her portable terminal with her other hand. After a few seconds, she called over to MC, asking him to relocate a thin plate off the wall.
MC obliged, revealing paneling covered with glowing white lines that looked a bit like fiber optic cables, along with a circular black surface two inches across. Nova extended a cable from her terminal and magnetically snapped it to the receptacle.
“I really thought you guys would’ve moved past wires and cables by now…” MC said, scratching his head.
“Of course, but wired technology still offers unparalleled speed and security. Most of the Dyn’s Zevan-type military construction requires direct contact for the most sensitive operations for that very reason.”
And what she was doing was sensitive indeed. Sareen’s data crystal contained admin-level credentials to some of the peripheral systems in the facility. Between that and Nova’s formidable experience with Dyn tech, she had more than enough to subvert their systems and disable the base’s sensors, at least temporarily.
The seconds turned into minutes, giving MC an opportunity to analyze the room.
Unlike the pillars from earlier, this place felt distinctly human—or like what human tech would look like a thousand years into the future. The walls were all matte white and sterile, and he couldn’t find a single distinct light source. Every surface of the room radiated its own glow—the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, all casting a bright, diffuse light across the entire room. Elegant, in a minimalist Zen way.
“And done! The facility’s alarms should now be off-line. The sensors will still register intruders, but the mechanism that informs the rest of the base of an emergency has been suppressed. My tampering will not be missed by their next sweep, though I am hopeful that this should give us enough time to reach the transit gateway’s control room.”
“Nice work, Nova.” And he meant it—her handiwork here might very well mean the difference between a successful operation and a horrible death. “I’m just surprised you found an access point in a bathroom, of all places.”
She smiled. “When any society progresses past a certain point, you can find technology just about everywhere. It is nigh impossible to avoid.”
Confirming that she was ready, he undid the barricaded door and approached. The door broke down into hundreds of small square pieces, disassembling and moving out of the way to allow MC through. A quick look out into the dazzlingly white hallway showed all was clear, so they moved out.
He had to admit, he did not expect to see the sight that awaited them. They found themselves in a cylindrical tunnel several hundred yards in length, hallways branching off to the right every now and then. That’s beca
use the entire left half of the hallway was no regular hall at all. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran along the entire stretch, and past those windows was an ocean.
MC stared up at the grandeur—the facility was situated at the bottom of the shallow arctic ocean, about a hundred-odd feet below the surface. Cracked ice floes loomed far above, floating upon the frozen water’s surface, filtering rays of sunlight that danced upon the otherwise dark ocean floor.
Just below them, dozens upon dozens of enormous pipes ran from the facility out along the seabed like tendrils, some so long that they disappeared into the distance. All were encrusted in several layers of thick ice.
“Heatsinks,” Nova answered. “Charging the teleporter involves driving massive amounts of energy into equally massive energy cells buried within the ocean floor. The cells would melt if the heat wasn’t shunted into the ocean.”
That didn’t sound good at all.
“Exactly how hot are we talking here?”
“When we charge the Gateway, they will achieve a temperature of almost a thousand degrees, melting the ice that covers them. It should make for quite the sight.”
“Yeah, I was afraid you’d say that.”
He’d been hoping that their infiltration would remain hidden for as long as possible, but that wasn’t going to happen when those pipes lit up like a Christmas tree. When that happened, Dyn reinforcements would descend on them like an orbital mass driver.
“So, if teleportation takes this much energy, how can I do it so easily?”
“That is what I would like to know! Granted, your ability is severely range-restricted compared to the transit gateway, but the energy required is still substantial. Creating the wormhole is one thing, but pulling targets through is another matter entirely!”
While Nova was happy to discuss that topic for an hour, he cut her short, gesturing at their surroundings. She got the hint.
Looking through the transparent wall and roof, MC could see that the corridor they were in snaked into a mountainous rock formation at the bottom of the ocean, where the rest of the facility was housed.
They proceeded down the long passage, the dazzling marine display off to their left. Nova explained that the windows were really a form of transparent metal, rather than the much more fragile glass.
Every time they came upon a hallway junction, MC would stop to relocate sections of the floor or walls to seal the opening. Then he’d fuse them several times over, creating a reinforced barricade. He didn’t stop there, though; he blockaded the long hallway itself, mixing the rock outside in the ocean with the facility’s own advanced metal, completely filling in the passage behind them. When they’d planned the invasion, this was one of the reasons they’d chosen not to head directly for the control room—the alarms would’ve sounded the instant they breached its walls, giving MC no time to alter the landscape.
Even the Dyn wouldn’t have a great time melting through all of that crap with their lasers and plasma torches. His goal was to seal off as much of the compound as he possibly could, ideally closing every ingress point to the central control room, where they were headed. This may be enemy territory, but he’d be damned if he didn’t try to stack the cards in his favor.
As they progressed, MC erected more and more impediments, and by the time they reached the door at the end, the hallway was no more; a solid mass of material occupied every square inch of open space. There wasn’t actually enough Dyn material to pull that off, so he’d had to resort to increasingly large amounts of rock from the ocean floor outside. Not as strong, but better than nothing. He hoped that it’d compel their pursuers to start at the less filled-in sections farther out and bore their way through when they attacked.
They made their way into an adjoining room, which was another hallway that terminated in a T junction. MC sealed off the corridor to the right, leaving the left one open. From the blueprints, only the right corridor led to the central control room. Though likely pointless against such a capable enemy, there was still a small chance that leaving the other one would cause their pursuers to waste some time.
More importantly, it allowed him to use the area as a choke point. The Dyn would first have to bore through the long corridor he’d sealed behind them—then the aliens would all pile up in this room as they melted their way through the remaining blockage. It made for a perfect kill zone, letting him relocate them in en masse in one fell swoop.
Before they rounded the next bend, Nova grabbed MC’s arm and signaled him to stop. One of the base’s automated defenses lay just up ahead—some kind of deployable drone that would roll out to wherever it was most needed.
There was an easy solution, though. MC simply relocated a portion of the rock outside the compound right into the drone. He couldn’t really aim without Midar, but he didn’t need to. The area he moved was large enough for it not to matter at all. The wall pieces fused with the drone, rendering it completely inert.
They continued to make their way down a couple more halls without issue, where MC created similar choke points. Their first real problem came right after that, when a Zevan-type worker walked out of an adjacent room. MC leaped into action, fusing the hapless Dyn directly into the rock surrounding the compound. It happened so quickly that Nova took a few seconds to even register the brutal chain of events.
MC gave her a pointed glance, but she held her silence, refusing to make eye contact. She was acutely aware that by blocking off large sections of the facility, he’d been avoiding casualties, and was actually somewhat thankful even if she couldn’t bring herself to show it.
As they rounded the next corners, it became obvious that they were getting close. Vaguely humanoid mechs were positioned in several places with some kind of weapon in their hands. If he had to guess, they were probably handheld microwave emitters, but the mechs themselves were unlike anything he’d seen.
With three spindly needle legs that looked almost like amber crystals, they were arranged in a tripod configuration. Their torso was a rapidly rotating sphere that hovered suspended just above their tripod legs. A crystalline upper torso floated on top of all that, equipped with four spindly appendages, two of which held a rifle. The other two terminated in odd protrusions whose purpose remained mysterious to him. There was no head.
As intriguing as they were, they lacked the Zevan shield that nullified his ability. In fact, he hadn’t spotted a single Zevan at either the pillar or this teleporter facility thus far.
The instant he’d ensnared them within the energy dampener, they’d gone dead, halting in place like robots. MC happily took the opportunity to dispatch them all.
“Remote-operated drones,” Nova whispered. “The Dyn would never risk their own lives as you humans do, fighting in your wars. The vast majority of Dyn forces are either drones or lesser sentients used as frontline troops.”
“Damn. I guess that means our presence is going to be noticed no matter what we do. Probably best not to take any more of them out, in case the operators notice a pattern.”
Choosing to teleport past the remainder of the guard patrols, they soon found themselves at the final door where two Ultimators stood. That gave MC a fright—he quickly ducked back around the corner before they noticed. Sareen’s crystal hadn’t mentioned any Ultimator presence at the base, but he supposed personnel changes were bound to happen, especially for such an important facility.
The Ultimator’s senses were keener than he’d thought, as one of them peeled off to take a look. MC shoved Nova back, expanding the stealth field to envelop the Ultimator just as it rounded the bend.
Upon realizing its comms had been cut off, the Ultimator halted, bringing its energy cannon to bear. MC sucked the behemoth into a relocation tunnel, fusing every inch of it right into the rocks outside the compound.
That was… surprisingly easy.
Not as easy as fusing rock to rock, and it took a bit more time, but fusing metal together did seem possible.
Of course, that was exactly when the base�
�s alarms went off. The white lighting flipped red. Sirens blared and the air grew foggy, cutting visibility to ten feet or less.
Eschewing any concerns over stealth, MC immediately targeted the other Ultimator, eliminating it in similar fashion. Without their magic barriers, the cybernetic badasses didn’t stand a chance, especially in close quarters. The relocator was like a grim reaper, silently, instantly ending everything it touched. Including the handful of tripod drones that remained.
With Nova following behind him, MC walked up to the automated double doors of the central control room, which remained firmly shut at their approach.
But what were doors to someone like him?
It was time to hijack an intergalactic teleporter.
Twelve
“Why is it empty? There should have been operat—” Nova’s eyes widened in shock as she looked around the room.
“I used ground-penetrating radar to scan and relocate everyone inside. You think I’d just walk in here with unknown hostiles? No way. Besides, with the sirens going off, stealth wasn’t a huge priority.”
Nova quirked a smile. “I should not have expected anything less.”
What he neglected to mention was that killing Dyn seemed to be getting harder. Normally it worked the other way—the more you killed, the easier it got. But he could feel the parasite instinctually resisting when he killed a Dyn. So far, it’d been nothing but a minor annoyance, but if left unchecked, it could definitely become a problem in the future. An issue for another time.
Nova went to work in the spotlessly white, hemispherical room, manipulating several digital touch panels on its periphery. They sprang to life, lighting up with all manner of lights and text—Zevan text, since the Dyn language and theirs was apparently one and the same. Holograms materialized in the air above them, which she deftly manipulated at a speed that boggled MC’s mind. He couldn’t help but gawk at the girl as she worked. She looked like a master conductor directing an orchestra.
