Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5)

by Anthony James

  The corridor became a compact room with three further exits. The pipes and cables vanished into the walls and ceiling, giving the squad a little more freedom to spread out and bring their firepower to bear. Conway ordered a halt and the soldiers swapped positions to allow those who’d been defending the rear some respite.

  For a few seconds, the room was gripped by what would appear to the untrained eye as the chaos of uncoordinated activity. Soldiers moved from place to place to get into a better position or to allow their squad mates to take over. Some changed magazines, whilst others crouched and unloaded into the passage. Conway didn’t see chaos, only well-trained men and women holding up under the strain of a difficult withdrawal.

  “I’m running low on ammo,” Kemp reported.

  A couple of the others said the same. Conway watched Nixil drop out the massive rectangular magazine for his chain gun and snap a new one in its place.

  “I do not have many spares,” said the Fangrin.

  “I’m not expecting a resupply anytime soon,” said Conway.

  The squad held for twenty seconds and poured bullets into the passage behind them. In the darkness it was hard to be sure if they were hitting moving targets or wasting their shots on Sekar who were already dead. Conway remembered seeing the tharniol rounds punching clean through the aliens before and he hoped that any of the Sekar behind their own dead would be taking shots.

  “Which way?” asked Lieutenant Rembra. The Fangrin stood to the left of the squad and used his chain gun sparingly to conserve ammunition.

  Any hope that the Sekar would be wiped out in the fusillade didn’t come to fruition. With the pain a constant thumping irritation in his head, Conway ordered the squad to exit through the passage directly behind.

  “Lieutenant Rembra, you take the lead,” he ordered.

  With the squad moving again, Conway took his turn at the back of the pack. The Sekar attack didn’t resume immediately and the squad was deep into the exit tunnel before the lights dimmed. Conway was with Barron and Hacher, and between them, they kept the enemy at bay with short bursts of gunfire.

  The squad’s ammunition reserves were a concern and Conway was determined that each shot would count. Unfortunately, the darkness of both the environment and the enemy made it almost impossible to target efficiently.

  His ammo readout hit zero at the same time as Barron’s magazine ran dry. At the same moment, Hacher let up on the trigger of his chain gun. In the brief lull, the sounds of footsteps and the menacing scratching of talons came to the fore. Conway and Barron slammed in new magazines at the exact same moment and the firing resumed.

  “This is bizarre,” panted Barron, out of breath from a combination of everything.

  “Yeah.”

  Conway’s full magazine became an empty one and still the Sekar came. He got a sense of desperate hunger from them, as though it consumed them entirely. There’d be no communicating with an enemy like this one – the Sekar would hunt until every source of life was gone. The thought stoked Conway’s fury some more, at the same time as he experienced a sense of hopelessness.

  “You’re coming into a room, sir,” said Lockhart on the comms. “Oh shit.”

  “What is it?”

  Before Lockhart was able to answer, Conway entered the room. He couldn’t look all around, but his periphery suggested it was another empty room, maybe ten meters on each side and with a high ceiling. The sound of gunfire he heard was attributable to more than his gun combined with Barron and Hacher’s. Other soldiers were shooting and at first, Conway believed they were assisting his withdrawal.

  “’Ware left!” shouted Lockhart. “And ahead!”

  With a sinking heart, Conway saw that the Sekar had cut them off. The aliens were fast enough to find another way around, or they were coming from different locations. It didn’t matter one way or another.

  Conway took long backwards strides into the room, still firing. He sensed movement and caught a glimpse of a dark shape descending through a fast-opening hatch in the ceiling a couple of feet above his head. He heard a motor whine and barrels spin.

  “Ceiling gun!” he yelled.

  “Crap,” said Berg.

  Conway dropped to a crouch, hoping he could remain out of the gun’s firing arc. The weapon started up with a tremendous sound. It was a much large caliber than anything the Fangrin were packing and it spewed bullets in a storm which produced faintly glowing traces across Conway’s vision. He was certain his luck had run out and that he and his squad were going to be killed in this forsaken place.

  In a short, devastating burst, the chain gun fired into the passage behind Conway. Then, it changed aim, moving impossibly fast so that it was pointing left. The gun fired for two long seconds and rotated once more to fire straight ahead. For the next few seconds, it repeated the fire-adjust-fire-adjust routine, while the soldiers huddled unharmed beneath.

  “Steady with your fire,” Conway ordered. “Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

  So deadly was the gun that the Sekar were unable to make it out of the side tunnels. In amongst the press of men, women and Fangrin, Conway did his best to see what was going on. The only sense he got of the ongoing attack was the suppression of the light and what seemed like a wall of solid darkness being held back by the savagery of the chain gun.

  After a time, the chain gun stopped firing through one of the exits and divided its firepower between the other two. Then, abruptly, it stopped shooting altogether and its red-glowing barrels became still. The air beneath the gun was warm and heavy with the now-familiar scent of heated tharniol.

  “The pressure in my head disappeared,” said Brice.

  “Mine too,” said Torres.

  A death pulse came, proving to Conway beyond all doubt that the universe was deliberately capricious. He couldn’t bring himself to rail against it. The Sekar in the immediate vicinity were gone, leaving him and his squad a chance to take another step closer to victory, whatever form that might take.

  Nobody lost sight of the urgency and the squad shook off the aftereffects of the death pulse. They climbed to their feet swearing and cursing, while those with the largest number of full magazines exchanged them for empties in order to balance out the ammunition. Everyone did what they could to cram in extra rounds at the same time as they kept wary attention on the exit passages or the chain gun overhead.

  Conway didn’t think the chain gun was going to shoot any of the soldiers – he could now see that it had full 360-degree rotation and that it could shoot targets directly underneath. Why it had left the squad unharmed, that was another thing entirely and Conway didn’t have any ideas beyond pure guesswork.

  “You’ve got two minutes to reload your magazines,” he said, deciding that sprinting off without giving the soldiers the opportunity would be a mistake.

  He wheeled around, preparing to pick a random direction. Every one of the exits appeared identical, with grey-white illumination spheres fading into the distance. Conway turned, hoping intuition would kick in, or that his brain would suddenly identify the squad’s location on the image of the map he kept referring to on his HUD.

  Instead, Conway found assistance from a completely unexpected source – a source he didn’t understand and one he didn’t know if he could trust. Without warning, the lights in three of the exit passages winked out like they’d never existed. The lights in the fourth stayed on and the significance of it wasn’t lost on Conway.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  Most of the others had noticed it too and they talked about it uneasily.

  “Someone or something wants us to go that way,” said Kemp.

  “So it seems,” Conway agreed.

  “This is an opportunity,” said Lieutenant Rembra.

  Conway wasn’t sure he agreed wholeheartedly with the conclusion. However, this was definitely something to take notice of. The light controls had been deliberately altered – there was no getting around the fact.

  “Nothing abo
ut the Sekar makes me think they would do this, which leaves the Raggers.” Conway paused. “Or whoever constructed this base.”

  “The Raggers are our best buddies now, sir,” said Torres in mocking tones. “So whichever of those two is pressing the light switches, I reckon we’re better off finding out what they want.”

  “I agree,” said Conway. He jammed a last round into one of his spare magazines and dropped it into his ammo bag. A glance told him he had only a few loose extras and several other magazines with no rounds in them.

  He couldn’t do anything about his ammunition, but he could get on with the mission. Without much trepidation, Conway set off along the new passage. He didn’t need to turn to make sure everyone was with him and he set a good pace that wasn’t quite a jog.

  The corridor came to an intersection, though Conway didn’t realize it since the lights were off on the left-hand passage. He gave a mental shrug and turned right. His head was clear, giving him reassurance that the Sekar weren’t anywhere close. In addition, they hadn’t come across a dead Ragger for a while, leading him to guess the aliens hadn’t made it this far into the facility in their efforts to recover the data arrays.

  The thought reminded him how much this whole situation stank of treachery. The Raggers had given the impression this was their base, yet it clearly wasn’t. It made Conway wonder what exactly the aliens had been up to here, or what their ambitions were. Having seen the Raggers’ efforts on Qali-5 and Reol, he was certain it wasn’t going to be anything beneficial to the Unity League or the Fangrin.

  “And here we are doing the hard work for them,” muttered Conway. “When the double-cross comes, what am I going to do about it?”

  The question came from nowhere and, though he had no immediate answer, he was aware that eventually he might find himself with a tough call to make, and one which had the highest of stakes should he screw up or guess wrong.

  Fifty meters along the new passage, it turned again, then once more a short distance later. Where before everything had been quiet except for the sound made by the squad, now Conway could hear a background humming, like a power source was somewhere nearby. He didn’t slow and, in fact, the faint lights seemed to draw him onwards, faster and faster.

  They came to a room. The walls weren’t visible, which made it a big space, and Conway was left with the impression it was cavernous. Most of the lights were out, leaving only a line of them on a ceiling which was so high, it was hard to make out the pinpoints of illumination. This line went left until it was lost to sight. Somewhere ahead, technology hummed in the freezing air.

  Conway knew who he trusted and unknown alien entities did not figure high on his list. Still, he was committed and he wasn’t going to back off having followed the trail of lights this far. His small group of soldiers seemed isolated and lost in the diminished pool of light and he ordered them to turn on their head torches. As he feared, the beams of light didn’t do much other than to confuse his sight while not making anything clearer.

  “Switch them off,” he said, and then waited for his eyes to adjust once more to the darkness.

  They followed the lights, not without some disquiet. Most of the squad were silent and Conway recognized it as a sign that they were right on the edge. They’d seen their fair share of the unusual, yet this place was different – it possessed a strange mix of both threat and sanctuary. It was difficult for anyone to come to terms with the conflict between the two.

  The trail took the squad along one of the walls and then turned left, before leading them into a new passage.

  “If these lights aren’t bullshitting us, they’re going to save us plenty of wandering,” said Warner.

  “You think that somehow they know we’re looking for data arrays and they’re about to lead us straight to them?” asked Torres in disbelief. “Man, you need to take a look at yourself, Warner.”

  “Something could have read our minds,” he protested. “Or be following us on internal security,” he added, quickly coming up with a more realistic suggestion.

  “Whoever’s controlling these lights, they saved us from the Sekar,” said Conway. “And I get a feeling they don’t care too much for the Raggers either. At the moment, I’m happy to see what that means for us.”

  The lights stopped at a door in the wall. Conway got the hint and lifted his hand to connect with the access panel. Instead, the door opened of its own accord to reveal a teleport cubicle.

  “In,” said Conway, pointing across the threshold.

  Moments later, the entire squad was inside and once again the door closed by itself. Conway remembered the vibration from his previous transits and it started immediately. When it faded, the door opened onto a new area of the facility.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Conway looked carefully outside and saw nothing which was obviously threatening. It was no longer dark and oppressive, which led him to believe they’d arrived in a place to which the Sekar had no access.

  “Secure the area,” he said.

  “Look at all this,” said Kemp, half a dozen strides from the teleporter.

  The squad was in a hemispherical room with a diameter of about forty meters and lined with tharniol alloys. Many pieces of alien tech – mostly control consoles – lined the perimeter of the room. In the center of the room was a smaller hemisphere, which Conway estimated had a diameter of about twenty meters. He saw closed double doors in the wall of this inner hemisphere, which made him think it was a room within a room. Multiple power sources hummed.

  As well as the room’s unusual appearance, it held another surprise. In contrast to everywhere else, the temperature was warm enough to support life and the air was breathable. Nobody was eager to take off their suit helmets in order to try a lungful.

  Conway’s first impression that the room contained no threats turned out to be correct. He couldn’t even see any indication of concealed auto defenses. Still, it wasn’t time to relax and he reminded everyone to stay on guard.

  “Looks like we’ve got two more teleporters over this way,” said Kemp, out of sight on the far side of the room.

  “Watch them,” ordered Lockhart. “Private Berg, you help out.”

  While Lockhart and Rembra got on with the details, Conway walked towards the nearest console. The similarities between this and the tech he remembered from the Zemilius were unmistakable. It looked old, yet he’d seen enough to learn that this alien species was in many ways more advanced than the Unity League and the Fangrin.

  “Powered off,” he said. “Or in a sleep state.”

  “Want me to take a look, sir?” asked Freeman.

  “I don’t know,” said Conway, looking around. “Those lights brought us here and now there’s nothing to indicate where we should go.”

  He was on the verge of trying to power up the console when he heard a swishing sound. Conway spun, bringing his rifle up.

  “Those doors just opened, sir,” said Freeman, gesturing towards the center hemisphere.

  Conway made sure everyone in the squad was aware and he called over Rembra, Freeman and Barron. Together, they walked cautiously towards the opening. Through the doors, Conway saw another room, containing yet another hemisphere – this one made from a pure black material.

  A short way from the opening, he raised a hand and the others stopped. The humming he’d heard earlier was much louder, though not enough to be painful, and the air felt charged. Conway ran an environmental check and it didn’t detect anything hazardous. Or more accurately it didn’t detect anything known and hazardous.

  Confident that he was expected to proceed, Conway stepped into the central room. The lights were subdued, but better than most other places in the facility. The hemisphere he’d noticed from outside turned out to be an entire sphere with a diameter of six meters, made from an unknown and completely nonreflective black substance. Only half of it was above the floor level, while the rest was contained in a circular bowl that sank below the floor.

  A half-meter
gap between sphere and bowl was enough for Conway to note that the object had no visible support. It floated in place, an exact distance from the edges.

  “Before anyone asks me what it is, I’ll tell you that I don’t know,” he warned.

  The rest of the room appeared empty and Conway led the squad all the way around to make sure it was so. The place contained nothing apart from the sphere.

  “Maybe this is where the death pulse is coming from,” said Freeman. “And whatever directed us here is located elsewhere and wants us to destroy it or something.”

  “I’m not convinced,” said Barron.

  “Rembra?” asked Conway.

  The Fangrin stared with his eyes half-open. “I do not believe this is the death pulse generator.”

  “Then what is it?” asked Freeman. “If it’s one of the data arrays, we’ve been badly misled about the portability.”

  Conway stepped closer to the sphere, with his feet on the edge of the bowl. He saw nothing that gave away the tiniest hint of its purpose. Yet here it was – vast, inscrutable and with an obvious importance. Before he could stop himself, Conway reached out and laid the palm of his free hand onto its surface.

  Immediately, his helmet computer reported an intrusion attempt on its hardware. In alarm, Conway tried to back away, but his hand wouldn’t come free from the sphere, like it was glued there. When he tried again, Conway noticed that his body wasn’t responding. He wasn’t stuck to the sphere, he was frozen in place.

  Conway’s body was no longer under his control, but his mind worked fine and he felt a curious lack of fear. He stopped struggling and noticed that the intrusion on his computer was finished. Whatever had broken in had left a single file behind. When Conway accessed the file, he discovered it was a new language module and he moved it into the correct area of the suit’s databanks.

  REFUGE 9> Greetings.

  The voice formed in the center of Conway’s mind. The tones were neither male nor female and lacked emotion or inflection.