“I’ll just ask it instead,” said Recker.
Axiom> Excon-1 - where does the biometric re-scan take place?
Excon-1> The nearest security station is within eight hundred metres of the docking bay exit. Be warned, Lavorix infiltrators are present in the area.
Axiom> Numbers?
Excon-1> 653.
“Damn,” said Recker.
Given the size of the space station, the Lavorix may well be spread out, or indeed nowhere near the place Recker needed to go. Somehow, he didn’t think it likely.
Axiom> Please provide directions to the security station.
Excon-1> I have placed the map data in your warship’s databanks.
Time was running out and Recker broke off the conversation. He called up a list of most recent files and downloaded a copy of the Excon-1 map data. When he loaded it onto his screen, he found what he expected – an intricate, multi-level map of a structure that contained hundreds of levels, along with thousands of corridors and internal spaces.
This upper docking bay was the largest of the internal spaces and Excon-1 had highlighted the route to the security station in red. Recker zoomed the map and determined that the forward boarding ramp was likely to provide the closest exit when the Axiom finally docked.
He picked up his suit helmet and grabbed the rifle he’d propped against his console a few minutes ago. The moment the seals around his neck tightened, he accessed the squad open channel.
“Sergeant Vance, head for the forward boarding ramp.”
“What about the Daklan, sir?”
“They aren’t in the same channel?”
“No, sir. They refused.”
In no mood for any further delay, Recker ordered his suit comms to hunt for receptors. He located a single green light and requested a connection. A moment later, he was speaking to Sergeant Shadar and Recker told the alien in no uncertain terms what he expected. Shortly after, the Daklan soldiers joined the squad comms and Recker counted a total of thirty soldiers at his command.
He took one last look around the bridge and then handed over to Commander Aston. The flight controller had guided the Axiom between the two half-open doors and it wouldn’t be long before the warship touched down.
“Take care, sir,” said Aston.
Recker nodded, fully aware of how important his life was since he was the only person in the HPA capable of accessing the Meklon hardware. He ran for the forward boarding ramp as quickly as the confines of the passages allowed. Being last to arrive, Recker found the passage leading to the airlock crammed with hulking Daklan and smaller humans.
No sooner had he joined the back of the pack than Recker felt the Axiom touch down and the propulsion note dropped to little more than a whisper.
He got on the open channel. “I’ve made the map data available to every one of you. We’re following the red line to the security station, where I’ll have my biometric data re-scanned. Once that’s done, we’re going to extract whatever data our species might use against the Lavorix. Anything moves, assume it’s hostile and kill the bastard. No quarter. We’ve got 653 enemies arrayed against us and that means we have to fight with our brains.”
“Yes, sir,” said Vance.
“We will succeed,” growled Shadar.
“Does anyone know what these Lavorix look like?” said Private Drawl, trying hard not to sound nervous.
“I hear their asses look exactly like your face, Drawl,” said Private Redman, bursting into laughter at his own joke. “So we know they’re ugly.”
“Enough!” shouted Recker. “Any more of that crap and you’ll be dealing with me. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. We’ve got two mean-as-hell squads of soldiers here and this is a chance to start getting even for what happened to our planets. In case you hadn’t heard, we’re running against the clock. The Lavorix have something called a Galactar inbound. A game changer. When it breaks out of lightspeed, I want to be six hours in the opposite direction and that means we can’t piss about.”
Nobody asked questions and the air had a sudden electric quality to it, like the soldiers of both species understood what was coming and were eager to get on with the mission.
“First man, lower the boarding ramp,” shouted Recker.
“I’ve got it, sir,” said Vance.
The boarding ramp gears clunked and the motors whined. Air was sucked past Recker and into the vacuum of the bay. He glanced over his shoulder to reassure himself the Axiom’s inner door twenty metres behind was closed.
And then, he was moving, following the burly figure of Private Hunter Gantry with his MG-12 repeater, towards the top step of the ramp. Moments later, Recker was on his way to the bay floor, his mind turning fast and conjuring up endless possibilities for the path ahead.
Chapter Thirteen
The darkness of the bay was absolute and the temperature was far enough below zero that Recker felt the chill through his suit’s insulation. On another occasion, he might have worried about concealed threats to his soldiers. Not now – he knew the Axiom’s crew would be watching and the darkness was no impediment to the warship’s sensors.
His night vision enhancement activated automatically, lending a tinge of sickly green to everything. Turning 360-degrees, Recker tried to make sense of his surroundings. The flight controller had landed the Axiom near to the bay’s left-hand wall, while the right-hand wall was a long way in the distance. Peering through the heavy cruiser’s landing legs, Recker could see that the bay doors were still open and he guessed their motors had failed.
Under guidance from Sergeants Vance and Shadar, the soldiers had taken positions of cover amongst the warship’s legs.
“Move!” Recker ordered. “The Axiom is watching out for us - head for the bay exit.”
The soldiers got going without hesitation, darting from cover to cover like it was a habit they couldn’t break. Without air to carry the sound, everything was done in silence, except for the occasional word on the comms. As he passed one of the retractable landing legs, Recker planted his palm against the alloy and looked up to where it vanished high overhead into its socket. The extent of the damage from the earlier engagement was visible even from this vantage, and splayed pieces of metal jutted outward like fingers of a taloned hand.
Once the soldiers emerged from the warship’s underside, they broke into a fast-paced jog, heading for the chosen exit. The night vision enhancement wasn’t perfect and Recker struggled to identify the precise location of the door. The best he could make out was a lighter patch on the wall, about eight hundred metres ahead.
With the life support system on Excon-1 maintaining a gravity level roughly comparable to that on Earth and Lustre, Recker found it easy to pace himself and he arrived at the exit with his heart rate only moderately elevated. He counted himself lucky that he wasn’t carrying a data extractor, a medical box or Gantry’s MG-12, but those soldiers with a heavier loadout hadn’t dropped back.
“This is the way,” said Recker.
The exit door was huge and clearly designed for loading vehicles to pass through. At one side, the access panel showed a tiny red light.
“Sergeant Vance, you give it a try,” said Recker. “This mission will be off to a bad start if I have to open every single door.”
“Yes, sir,” said Vance. He reached out and touched the panel.
For long moments, the light remained red. Then, it switched to green, which made Recker believe a far airlock door had closed automatically to isolate the rest of the interior. The metre-thick outer door slid silently into a left-hand recess, to reveal a fifty-metre passage leading to another – closed - door. It was what Recker had expected.
“Sergeant Vance, go.”
Beckoning six soldiers to come with him, Vance sprinted along the corridor and crouched at the next panel, which was also red.
“I don’t like it, but the whole squad should enter this airlock, sir,” said Vance. “It’s bett
er than getting separated.”
Recker gave the order and the other twenty-three soldiers hurried into the passage. The moment he was satisfied with their positions, he joined Vance and signalled for him to open the inner airlock. In the same eerie silence as before, the outer door closed and Recker lifted his gauss rifle as he waited for the inner door to open.
When it happened, he found himself looking into an expansive storage area, resembling a warehouse in size and contents. Alloy crates of many different shapes and sizes were stacked in an orderly fashion, towering to the ceiling a hundred metres overhead. When Recker stared upwards, he spotted an intricate pattern of grooves, along with blocky gravity cranes which likely did the heavy lifting.
An aisle ran straight through the middle of the storage area and joined a tunnel which continued deeper into Excon-1. On the left-hand side, an enormous, utilitarian flatbed was parked. The vehicle floated a metre above the smooth floor, indicating it was still operational.
Bodies lay everywhere – in the main aisle, along the side routes and in front of the doorway. They were bipeds and wore combat suits of a colour Recker couldn’t easily determine with his night sight active. The way they’d fallen made him think their life switches had been turned off and they’d simply dropped to the ground.
The storage area was pressurized, allowing the distressed sounds of tortured metal to carry through the air. Screeches, groans and distant booming noises made it difficult to hear anything else, and Recker abandoned hope that he might hear the approach of the enemy.
“As dead as the grave,” said Sergeant Shadar.
Recker glanced at the Daklan officer, unsure if he was referring to the corpses or the lack of movement. The alien’s face was hidden by the side of his helmet, making it hard to guess what he was thinking.
“Let’s watch and wait,” said Recker. Sensing the already tense soldiers nearby becoming edgy at the delay, he warned them to be calm. “This is nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said.
“These look like the same type of aliens we found in the cylinder on Oldis,” said Vance.
“I remember,” said Recker, casting his mind back to the pile of burned corpses in the tenixite converter. At the time, he’d thought they were part of the cylinder’s crew, but subsequent discoveries made him think they may have been Meklon attackers. “No sign of injuries on these ones.”
“None that I can see,” Vance confirmed.
“Another mystery.”
“This place is going to be full of them, sir.”
Recker double-checked the map - the main corridor diverged from his intended destination and eventually ended up at another, even larger space than this storage bay.
“We should find another passage over that way,” said Recker, pointing towards the right-hand corner of the bay. “After that, it’s another two hundred metres to the security station.” He cursed. “A thousand soldiers could be hiding in this warehouse and we wouldn’t hear them.”
“And they won’t hear us either, Captain Recker,” said Sergeant Shadar.
“In which case, we’ll surprise the bastards and shoot them first,” Recker replied. He waved the squads forward. “Move in.”
A stack of much smaller crates offered cover ahead and to the right of the aisle. Sergeant Vance, along with five members of his squad broke free from the wall and sprinted towards them.
“Clear,” said Vance.
Recker rose from his half-crouch, ready to join them, when he spotted movement about three hundred metres closer to the main exit tunnel. A shape emerged from behind a pile of crates, gangly and moving with an erratic gait. At first, Recker thought he was looking at more than one creature and then he realized it was, in fact, something with more than four limbs.
The squad was exposed in the corridor, leaving him with no option. Muscle memory took over and Recker aimed and fired his gauss rifle in one easy movement. The gun coils whined softly and the barrel thudded into his shoulder. He heard two other gauss discharges, along with the louder crack of a Daklan gun. In a sprawl of flailing limbs, the target fell in a heap.
“What the hell was that?” asked Private Gail Baylor.
“What do you think it was?” asked Corporal Givens, his voice dripping sarcasm.
“Quiet!” said Recker.
He gave a couple of brief orders and allowed the squad officers to put them into operation. Soldiers sprinted into the storage area, while Recker and three others watched, unmoving. No other aliens appeared and no matter how hard he tried to make sense of the distant corpse, he couldn’t figure out its exact form. A metre-long, metallic shape on the floor nearby indicated it had been armed, but otherwise, the creature was no more than a heap of flesh.
“Think it got out a warning?” asked Private Wayland Steigers.
“I don’t know,” said Recker. “It didn’t have time to shout, but its suit might have issued an automatic life signs warning.” He tapped Steigers on the shoulder. “Time to move.”
The last few soldiers in the airlock darted across to the smaller crates ahead. Sergeant Vance had already led the rest of the squad across another, narrower aisle and was about eighty metres closer to the intended exit. The most efficient route was self-evident and the Daklan ran with the human soldiers.
Recker dashed over the second aisle, which continued to the opposite wall. Stacks of other crates loomed high, making him feel like an insect in a pantry. A dead alien lay at his feet and he stopped only briefly to examine it, finding a grey-skinned, vaguely human face behind a clear visor, its features twisted in pre-death agony and its mouth locked open in a silent scream.
No injuries. What the hell caused this?
Comms discipline was immaculate and the soldiers made rapid progress, without encountering any more living aliens. Even so, Recker’s internal alarm bells were ringing and with each passing moment their clamour become louder.
The storage area was logically arranged in a grid, so progress was not stalled by unexpected dead ends. With his breathing deepened from the run, Recker arrived at his chosen exit, the size of which indicated it was intended for use by foot personnel. The crates here didn’t reach the wall, meaning the door was exposed to gunfire across the full width of the bay, so he didn’t delay. A thump of his palm on the access panel got the door open.
“Clear,” growled Sergeant Shadar, his gauss cannon aimed into the space beyond.
Recker heard a sound he recognized as a door motor. Shadar’s gun fired twice with a crack-crack and the Daklan sprinted into the opening.
“Not clear,” he said.
Itrol and Zivor charged in afterwards, followed by Raimi and Vance. No further gunfire came and then Shadar confirmed for a second time that the way was clear.
Recker hurried through the doorway, which led directly to a ten-metre square room. On the left and opposite walls, he saw racks of alien rifles, along with two larger pieces of hardware which might have been Meklon repeaters.
“Arsenal,” said Shadar, not taking his eyes from the single exit doorway.
An alien body lay across the threshold, preventing the door from closing, and the night sight enhancement made its blood glisten darkly. Recker stooped briefly to examine the corpse. The alien was facing away from him and it was dressed in a near-black suit made from a material that appeared to be made of ultra-fine links, like chain mail but with three millennia worth of technological know-how built in to make it vacuum proof.
“Four arms,” said Vance in obvious disgust. He nudged the corpse with one foot.
The topmost pair of limbs were attached to broad shoulders and the second, longer pair erupted lower down the creature’s torso. Two disproportionately short legs appeared muscular, though it was impossible to be certain of anything given the bulkiness of the combat suit the creature was wearing.
“Two different species fought over this space station,” said Recker. “These four-armed ones came out on top.” He stared at the corpse for a few moments longer. “This one
’s Lavorix,” he said. “All these others are Meklon.”
“How do you know, sir?” asked Vance.
“The Meklon lost the war, which make me think they’re the dead ones.”
Recker didn’t confide that a large part of his certainty came from intuition. With a hesitant movement of his arm, he placed a hand on one side of the creature’s suit helmet. The head protection was hemispherical at the back and when he turned it over, Recker discovered that the front and visor were flat and wedge-shaped.
The strangely pudgy face inside was pale white, perhaps with a tinge of putrid green, though again the night sight made things different. Two milky white eyes with near-invisible pupils stared outwards, and just below them were two holes instead of a nose. Thin lips were partially open and the teeth within were numerous and sharp, indicating the Lavorix had a diet predominantly consisting of meat.
“That is an ugly bastard,” Drawl confirmed from nearby. “My ass is a whole lot prettier than that.”
Recker hadn’t spent more than five or six seconds examining the Lavorix and he rose to standing. Ignoring the Meklon weapons – which might be of interest to the HPA labs but weren’t important right now - he joined Shadar and peered along the exit corridor to a closed door at the end.
“They’re coming,” said the Daklan.
“I know it,” said Recker, his internal alarms now sounding with such urgency that he couldn’t shut them out.
He got on the comms and provided Aston with an update. Already the signal was degraded, though he hoped to piggyback the Excon-1 internal comms as soon as his biometric re-scan was complete.
Without warning, the far door opened and movement flickered in the room beyond. Sergeant Shadar fired and Recker did likewise. The Lavorix vanished from sight and the found of its rapid footsteps was akin to a rhythmic pattering.
“Go!” Recker ordered.
Sergeant Shadar growled out a command to the nearest soldiers and they responded, following him at a sprint along the short passage. Recker spotted orange flickers on his movement sensors and he heard the discharge of human and Daklan weaponry.
Galactar (Savage Stars Book 3) Page 11
