Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5)

by Anthony James

  Chapter Fourteen

  The descent was a long one, through the near darkness and the freezing cold air. At the end of each flight, the steps came to a landing of solid metal and then switched back. Every time he set foot on a new landing, Conway felt a brief surge of hope that the bottom might close, only to be disappointed by more steps and another landing.

  Once more, the atmosphere was oppressive, to the extent that every sound was muffled. The soldiers said little and the absence of talk on the open channel plunged everyone into a state of mental solitude. Conway wondered how much of it was caused by the darkness and how much was a result of the squad’s proximity to the Sekar. Certainly, he’d fought in zero-light conditions before and it was never like this. Even so, he was reluctant to believe that an alien species could affect his mental state in this way. The universe was a strange place and he thought it best not to assume that the seemingly impossible could not, in some place, be a reality.

  Conway counted each switchback and by the time he’d reached as high as thirty, he was becoming concerned that the stairwell might be so deep that the squad could walk for hours without reaching the level below. The worry grew with each additional flight of steps, but Conway knew he’d reached the point of no return and he intended to keep going, come what may.

  A death pulse caught the squad by surprise. Private Berg tripped, cursed and began a headlong tumble down the steps. Conway turned through the pain racking his body and saw the soldier’s flight like it was in slow motion – a slow motion designed to fool his brain into thinking he had time to help when in reality his physical reactions were way too slow. Conway lifted an arm to try and arrest the man’s fall.

  Berg was saved from harm by Hacher. The Fangrin stuck a thick arm across the stairwell and Berg crashed into it, before dropping ass-first onto the edge of a step. No one laughed.

  “Ah shit,” said Berg, rubbing his lower back. “Thanks, man.”

  “No problem,” said Hacher.

  The descent resumed and, after a total of fifty switchbacks, they came to the bottom. A short passage led from the end of the steps, through an open doorway and into a space which was too large for Conway to discern the far walls or the ceiling. He concentrated and thought he could see shapes in front and to the left and right. Whatever these shapes were part of, the darkness denied him answers. A steady rumble filled the air, not loud, but enough that it couldn’t be ignored.

  Once again, Conway felt like he was standing in the center of his own hemispherical bubble of visibility, which moved every time he did. It wasn’t at all pleasant and he missed the lighting from the level above. He sent pings into the darkness and got conflicting results about the size of the room. The uncertainty didn’t help his mood.

  “Looks like we reached the business area of the facility, folks,” he said.

  “The place it all happens,” Kemp agreed.

  “Anyone getting head pressure?” asked Lockhart.

  The answers were in the negative and Conway set off into the room, aiming across the center. With each step, he could distinguish more details of the machinery. He believed that the room housed one huge piece of tech, which was made up from high cubes, linked with pipes and cables. Also, he noticed cylinders to the left and guessed they continued way beyond the extent of his sight. An environmental scan revealed the presence of tharniol in the air and his sensor also generated several null results from particles it didn’t recognize.

  “This tharniol might be the reason we’ve not seen any of the Sekar yet,” said Conway.

  “Maybe we should stop for a picnic,” Torres replied.

  “You bring the food and I’ll bring the recycled piss,” said Kemp.

  “Urgh, gross!”

  “What do you think comes out of that straw inside your helmet?”

  “Sweet nectar,” said Torres, giving Kemp the bird.

  Conway requested silence and he got it. One of the machine components lay straight in front of him and he approached what was a dark grey cube, five or six meters high. Conway placed his hand against it and felt a vibration through the palm of his combat suit gauntlet.

  “This is powered up,” he said. “I wonder what it does.”

  “It’s a big bastard right enough,” said Freeman. “HVAC?”

  Conway didn’t know. The machine didn’t have any obvious status panels, which likely meant it was monitored from elsewhere. And while Conway was no expert in the field of alien tech, he was pretty sure this place didn’t contain any extractable data array modules.

  “We’re going to find a way out of here,” he said.

  Between this cube and the next, a four-meter gap allowed the squad to proceed deeper into the room. The pipes and cables formed a broken-roofed tunnel and Conway found himself glancing around anxiously whenever they passed one of the side gaps. Darkness could hide many things, especially in a place like this, and Conway didn’t want to stumble into danger.

  When he came to the opposite wall, the step counter in Conway’s helmet informed him that the room was approximately two hundred meters from one side to the other. The constituent parts of the machine took up the vast bulk of the space and he was curious to know its purpose. Freeman could have been right about it being HVAC, but for some reason that would have been disappointingly banal.

  Conway didn’t get his answer. He located an exit further along the wall and led the squad towards it. The door was open and he asked Rembra’s opinion on whether or not the Raggers had disabled the security on this level as well. The Fangrin located the hidden access panel and stood quietly for a moment.

  “I believe the security is disabled as you said, though I cannot confirm if this is a result of Ragger interference,” he said. “This door is locked open.”

  “Nothing to keep out the Sekar,” said Corporal Barron, trying unsuccessfully to hide her disappointment.

  “The tharniol concentration drops along this passage,” said Conway, finishing up an environmental scan.

  “How about we wait for a death pulse to kill any Sekar and then make a run for it?” asked Kemp.

  It wasn’t a bad idea and Conway gave it some thought. “Screw it,” he said eventually, heading along the passage. “We don’t have the time to sit on our asses waiting for something that might take another thirty minutes or longer.”

  The corridor led to an intersection. A rack of pipes ran along the ceiling, only a few inches above Conway’s head and so low that Sergeant Lockhart and the Fangrin were required to keep their necks bent. Worse than that, the floor was covered in a thick layer of clear ice, which glistened in the low light and extended beyond visible range in both directions. Conway turned on his suit torch and the beam was eaten up by the darkness, the same as it had been when he came through the first teleporter. He switched it off.

  With a tentative foot, Conway tested the grip. The boots of a ULG combat suit could adhere to almost any surface. Ice wasn’t one of them and Conway could see that a journey along this passage would be fraught with danger, with or without the Sekar to contend with.

  He cursed sourly under his breath. “Wait here,” he ordered.

  With tentative steps, Conway went left. He kept one hand on the wall and the other on his rifle. It was difficult to maintain his balance and he slithered onwards. At one point, he turned awkwardly and could no longer see the turning, nor anyone from his squad.

  “Plenty of ice,” he said on the comms channel.

  “What about trying the other way?” asked Lockhart. “Or I could order someone to check it out.”

  “Hold for the moment.”

  A right-hand turn branched off the main passage and more pipes joined with those in the overhead rack. Spears of ice hung in countless places from the metal frame which suggested there’d been multiple ruptures in the pipes at some point in the past. Conway reached up and knocked a few of the icicles to the floor, where they shattered with hollow sounds and the pieces skittered away from him.

  “I’m coming
back,” he said. At that moment, he noticed the first suggestion of pressure in his head. “We might have incoming.”

  “I will ask if the others are experiencing physical symptoms,” said Rembra. A moment later, he spoke again. “You are the only one.”

  “That means they’re coming from my direction,” said Conway, turning clumsily. Once he was facing the correct way, he attempted to get up some speed by mimicking the actions of an ice skater. His daughter Emily had been asking him to go to the skating rink since forever and he’d never found the time to do it. Consequently, neither his balance or technique were perfect and Conway fought his way clumsily towards his squad. His HUD counter said he’d travelled fifty meters from their position, which was too far for comfort.

  “I can feel the pain in my head,” said Rembra. “You should return.”

  Conway didn’t bother replying and focused on his balance. Every two strides, he glanced over his shoulder to see if the Sekar were behind him. The pressure increased and he hated the darkness for protecting his enemies. Belatedly, he realized that’s exactly what it was meant to do.

  Twenty meters from his squad, Conway heard the click-click-click of talons striking hard ice. The Sekar were fast and he didn’t think he was going to make it. He slowed to a halt and readied himself to shoot his enemy. The thought of controlling his Gilner’s recoil while standing on a sheet of ice didn’t fill him with happiness.

  Conway wasn’t left to do it alone. While he was mid-turn, he was greeted by the hulking shapes of Rembra and Nixil coming towards him with steady, careful footsteps, their chain guns levelled and pointing along the corridor.

  “Get down, Captain Conway,” ordered Rembra.

  Conway dropped to his knees and leaned against the cold hard surface of the wall to brace himself. The first of the Sekar appeared at the perimeter of Conway’s visibility zone and hurtled onwards. More came behind, like a flood of pulsating darkness. With controlled hatred, Conway put three tharniol rounds into the first alien, changed aim and put three more into the next.

  At that moment, the two Fangrin opened up with their chain guns. In the confines of the corridor, the roaring took on a harsh, vivid edge that echoed and re-echoed to form a beating wave in the air. Hundreds of bullets smashed into the Sekar, opening up vast wounds in their dark forms. Conway emptied his first magazine into the pack and changed in a full one. Seconds later, that one was also empty and a third one took its place.

  Movement in the passage stopped and the three soldiers held fire. The Sekar were dead – or whatever happened to them when they got filled with bullet holes – and the pressure in Conway’s head was gone once more.

  “These creatures are mindless,” said Rembra. “They care nothing for their own existence.”

  Conway wasn’t so sure. The Sekar appeared to have done pretty well for themselves from what he’d learned so far. It seemed likely they had more intelligence than a suicidal attack on two chain gun wielding Fangrin in a narrow tunnel would suggest.

  “We know of one spaceship they built, Lieutenant.”

  “You are correct, Captain Conway. Somewhere amongst the Sekar are beings with the capability to master technology.”

  Ruing his lack of care in getting so far from his squad, Conway thanked Rembra and Nixil and returned to the others. His head remained clear and he hoped it would stay that way. During the short firefight, Sergeant Lockhart had used his initiative to hunt for other escape routes by ordering Kemp and Barron to investigate the right-hand turn. The ice in that direction didn’t extend far and after a short distance it ended, and the metal of the floor was exposed.

  Rather than persisting with the left-hand option, Conway had no problem abandoning it. Private Torres enquired in dulcet tones if he’d slipped onto his ass when he was running from the Sekar and Conway politely replied that he had astounded the aliens with his incredible ice-skating performance.

  The right-hand passage was much easier to travel and, although the pipes continued, none of them had burst and the squad did not encounter any more ice. Conway knew he’d screwed up and was glad that nothing worse had come from it. He gave himself a mental kick and told himself that if he was to take any future risks – no matter how small – he would follow the first rule in the handbook and bring someone with him to act as backup.

  Although free of ice, the passage was a long one and Conway picked up the pace. The low ceiling made it feel as though he was jogging along a square sewer pipe and for some reason, he didn’t like the idea.

  Eventually, the passage became a room. This room was filled with square ducts, all connected to a central housing. Much of the room was out of sight, but the thrumming of moving air was unmistakable. In Conway’s mind, the thrumming sounded oddly sluggish as if the air in the ducts had become glutinous.

  “Now this is HVAC,” said Kemp.

  “I didn’t hear you volunteering any good ideas in the last room, Private,” grumbled Freeman.

  It wasn’t important and Conway didn’t pay the two men any attention. The HVAC kit looked like it was a solid unit with no way through, so he skirted the wall, heading to the right. A doorway gave access to another low-ceilinged passage, with yet more pipes for Lockhart and the Fangrin to duck beneath.

  The new passage turned and turned again. Nothing conformed to how it appeared on the map, which reinforced Conway’s suspicion that they were completely lost. They crossed several intersections, with each new corridor vanishing in the gloom. The ceiling pipes were joined by racks on both walls, which hemmed in the soldiers and forced them to walk in single file. In addition to pipes, grey-sheathed cables emerged from the walls in places and ran along trays at head height.

  Conway was left with the impression that this was a purely functional area where the unglamorous equipment was routed in order to keep it hidden from sight. It didn’t fill him with confidence that he was about to locate a high-tech array of removable data modules.

  The lack of visibility became increasingly frustrating and with each passing step a belief settled upon Conway that he was picking the wrong option every time he was required to select between branches. The idea wormed its way deep inside his mind and eventually he was prepared to let someone else pick the direction. A glance at his HUD clock provided the surprising revelation that only ten minutes had elapsed since the squad had walked along the frozen passage. It seemed to Conway as if they’d been walking for hours.

  “Feels like this place is screwing with my head,” he said on the comms.

  “I keep telling myself it’s just another alien facility,” said Torres. “Seen one, seem ‘em all.”

  The same method hadn’t been working too well for Conway and he insisted to himself that his luck with the corridors would soon change and his squad would find something useful. After a time, the pressure started in Conway’s head. It remained on the limits of his perception for a couple of minutes until he questioned if it was there at all. Then it became stronger and the pain behind his eyes intensified.

  “How can we fight these assholes if we can’t hide from them?” asked Warner.

  “Who told you war was going to be fair?” asked Lockhart.

  “Nobody.”

  “That’s right - nobody told you it, so quit complaining.”

  The passage ended at a T-junction and the new way was much wider, with a higher ceiling. What appeared to be an enormous pipe ran along the ceiling and it was supported by thick struts coming from the upper part of the walls. The pipes and cables from the smaller joining passage split and ran in both directions.

  “Which way, sir?” asked Calhoun.

  Conway gritted his teeth in irritation at being asked after a delay of about two seconds. He didn’t reply and squinted both ways. The gloom was as impenetrable as it was everywhere else on this level and he couldn’t see anything that would help him decide. Conway took a few steps left to see if any clues lay just beyond the range of his sight. He saw nothing other than pipes and cables, and he returned
to the junction, cursing under his breath.

  “Look on the bright side, sir,” said Barron. “Left or right both seem like they might end up somewhere useful.”

  “We’re going this way,” he said, pointing along the right-hand passage.

  At that moment, the pain in Conway’s head got worse and the already-poor lights seemed to dull both in the narrow corridor behind and the wider passage to the left. It was bad news.

  “They found us,” said Kemp.

  “Yeah,” said Conway, his feet already moving along the right-hand passage. “Sergeant Lockhart, watch our backs.”

  “I’m on it, sir.”

  Conway set off at a measured pace – he knew exactly how fast a soldier could travel while also keeping a watch to the rear. They squad hadn’t covered much more than twenty meters when the firing started. The discharge note of the human Gilners was joined and nearly overcome by the roar of Fangrin chain guns.

  “We need a death pulse, sir,” said Lockhart, his voice taut.

  “Or a teleporter,” Conway replied, his eyes roving ahead for a means to escape.

  The gunfire’s intensity didn’t let up and the passageway was filled with the sound of it. Conway did his best to watch in both directions, but all he saw was soldiers confronting a seething darkness. Anger came and swept away the pressure pain in his head. With no apparent way to escape, Conway led his squad onwards.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Each retreating step was hard-fought. The Sekar were numerous and their dead bodies threatened to block their own progress. Occasionally, this bought the soldiers a few seconds in which to put some distance between themselves and their attackers, as well as to change magazines. However, the enemy were relentless and they broke through the barriers formed by their own dead in order to maintain the chase.

  A full minute after the first shots, Conway had no idea what form these particular Sekar had taken on. He supposed it didn’t really matter beyond his own mental requirement to know what his enemy looked like.