by M. R. Forbes
Even if they didn’t, James was going to enjoy blowing their base to hell.
The drone’s high-resolution cameras tracked along the base, revealing a covered starship landing pad with a communications array beside it, and a number of small buildings spread out across a larger campus, which was ringed by an old fence. There was also a half-destroyed reactor a few klicks out from the main facilities, and if it had ever provided power to the base, those days were long gone.
“It doesn’t look like much, sir,” James said through the comm.
“Not on the surface,” Tinker agreed. “Like many USSF compounds, the main complex is underground. It’s safer that way.”
“Roger that. Do you have an ID on the entrance?”
“I do. I’m marking it for you and your team.”
James brought up a map of the property the drone was relaying during its fly-by. A marker had appeared on it, against a building to the north. “Confirmed,” he said as he looked back at the platoon. All twenty-five members were in the line, loaded up and ready to jump. “Midnight Platoon is go, Tinker.”
“Roger,” Tinker replied. “Open the hold and get ready to — fuck!”
The sudden outburst almost caused James to run to Tinker’s module, afraid something had happened to him. Then he noticed the drone’s feed had gone dead.
“They spotted the drone, General,” Tinker said. “And took it out. Go. Go now!”
Chapter 18
A warning light flashed as the Harpy’s cargo ramp started coming down. The ship was still circling the target, staying well above the suspected range of anything the Centurions might have to throw at it. The Spacers weren’t armed for high-altitude craft since the only ones that were supposed to be in the area were their own. As the loss of the drone had just proven, that didn’t mean they had no air defense at all.
“Let’s move it Midnights!” James shouted, standing beside the opening ramp. “Get your asses over here and out the fucking door!”
The platoon was forming a single line behind James, while Major Efreet took a position beside him.
“I’ll take care of these dogs, General,” he said. “I’m sure you want to be the first one down.”
“Affirmative,” James replied.
He ran through the checks for his HALD equipment before pulling his large plasma rifle from the back of the armor. His jump pack was integrated into the suit, the fuel for the thrusters already loaded. He stepped in front of the platoon, turning to face the open air. A crisp wind that would have chilled them instantly without their armor on was rushing into the cargo hold.
“Helmets down!” Dark bellowed. “ATCS active!”
“Yes, sir!” the platoon shouted in unison.
James activated his comm and started down the platform at a run, heading for the open space at the end. “For Edenrise!” he shouted as he pushed off the edge, diving away from the Harpy.
“For Edenrise!” the Liberators shouted over their comms as they poured out of the ship after him whooping as they dove spreadeagled through the cloud cover.
James knew from the drone that the clouds were a thousand meters thick. That intel made it easy to time the activation of his drop thrusters since he would need to fire them full throttle to touch down nice and easy. It didn’t frighten him or concern him. He had practiced HALD jumps plenty of times before. As an elite unit, so had the rest of Midnight Platoon.
Tucking his arms into his body, he enjoyed punching through the air. The top of his visor was lined with the output from the platoon’s Advanced Tactical Combat System, showing each of Midnight’s members as a number inside a green circle starting with Major Efreet.
It didn’t take long to fall through the clouds, the visibility of the world around James barely more than a meter, not that there was anything to see besides a sea of white. He checked his altitude and then prepared to fire his thrusters.
The clouds began to thin beneath James, and he rotated his body, coming to a vertical position. Then he fired his thrusters, the sudden counterforce to the planet’s gravity causing a slight jolt. He lowered his head, keeping it trained on the ground as the compound became visible. After the drone was destroyed, he had expected the Centurions to be on a higher state of alert.
He wasn’t disappointed, but he was surprised. He had expected squads of soldiers to be moving in from patrol positions around the facility, and they were. But there was something else running across the field toward the main complex, in long smooth strides.
A robot, large and heavy, a rifle in its grip that was even larger than the one he was carrying.
“Tinker, are you seeing this?” he asked through the comm. The robot had spotted the falling Liberators, and was coming to a stop and preparing its rifle.
“Fucking Shield,” Tinker said. “The Trust didn’t tell me the Spacers had one of them here. Captain Fahri, bring the Harpy around. Midnight Platoon is going to need air support.”
“Roger,” Fahri said.
The Shield started to fire, railgun rounds snapping through the sound barrier and whipping up toward them. James dropped the thrust, throwing his body over and into a roll, the hypersonic rounds screaming past him. He straightened out a moment later, diving straight downward with only a thousand meters to go. He could afford to hit hard in his powered armor, but the rest of the platoon wasn’t nearly as protected. If any of them were going to survive the drop, he had to put the Shield out of action.
He raised his rifle, and opened fire as he continued to fall, sending a burst of bolts toward the robot. The rounds hit the machine in the shoulders, scorching the metal without burning through. The Shield ignored him, continuing its assault on his compact grouping of soldiers. James watched the ATCS update the status of his team, a pair of green circles turning red. Seconds later, three more changed color.
A fifth of his team gone in less than a minute. Fuck. He growled into his helmet as he triggered his reverse thrusters again. He was only two hundred meters off the ground and still falling fast.
Even with the thrusters, he hit hard. His armor shook from the impact, warning screens popping up on the visor. He ignored them all, forcing the suit into a run toward the Shield.
The robot was a few hundred meters away, in an open field ahead of the marker Tinker had set. James started shooting at it, sending bolt after bolt hurtling toward it. The rounds connected, hitting its metal shell and burning against it, the damage limited by what had to be advanced composite alloy.
The Shield finally gave up on the falling soldiers, calculating James as the bigger threat. It rotated in his direction, its rifle tracking toward him.
James jumped away, the powered armor carrying him into the air lateral to the Shield. Flechettes zipped past where he had been an instant ago, tracking his jump.
He didn’t see the Harpy approach, but he did see the results. Twin plasma cannons fired on the Shield from the edge of the clouds, the large bolts slamming into the machine. The first weakened its shell, the second destroyed it, burning a massive hole in its chest and knocking it down.
It didn’t get up again.
“Target destroyed,” Captain Fahri announced.
“Thanks for the assist,” James said.
“Any time, General.”
James checked the top of his visor. Five soldiers down. An entire fucking squad. The rest of Midnight Platoon were hitting the ground, dropping their jump packs where they landed and rushing across the field.
“Midnight Three, merge up with Two,” James said, noting the squad had lost three of its five soldiers.
“Roger that,” the ranking officer of the squad replied.
“Midnight One, take the left flank,” James said, monitoring the scene in a fresh feed from Scout Two. “You’ve got tangos incoming. Standard infantry, light armor.”
“Roger that,” Major Efreet said.
“Midnight Two, head for the hangar. Make sure there’s nothing inside that’s going to kill us.”
“R
oger.”
“Midnight Four and Five, you’re with me.”
“Roger.”
James started across the field, his powered armor sinking slightly into the grass with each step. Tinker’s mark was directly in front of him, a low-slung, fortified building with a closed blast door. It wasn’t large enough to have much space above ground. Probably a lift and an emergency stairwell, and maybe a small motor pool, armory, or storage area.
Gunfire echoed around him as the Liberators and Centurions met. Tinker’s voice started rattling over the comm, snapping out orders to each of the units while he watched the action unfold both through the drone’s airborne feed and the individual cameras on each soldier’s helmet. James was thankful to have Tinker take over now that he was on the ground – it was impossible to keep track of the entire battle when he had a mission of his own to complete.
He continued toward the protected building, the soldiers in Fourth and Fifth squad closing in on his position. The blast doors were still closed, sealed tight against the sudden attack.
But not for long.
“Who has the charges?” he asked, isolating his question to the two squads at his back.
“I do, sir,” Bones replied.
“Get them set. We need to blow this bastard open.”
“Roger.”
She ran up to him, carrying a hard-shelled satchel. She dropped it on the ground and opened the latches, revealing the explosives within. They were specially designed charges, created by Tinker for the express purpose of blowing out heavy doors. James had done plenty of exploration for Tinker over the years, and the USSF was incredibly consistent about keeping its valuables behind hardened entries. They had assumed the worst when it came to the future of the planet and the outcome of the war with the trife and had done their best to make sure the ordinary rank and file didn’t get their hands on their equipment. At least not easily.
Bones placed the charges on the left side of the entrance, evenly spaced. She tossed the last two to James, unable to reach the top of the doorway, and he used the small amount of fuel left in his jump thrusters to get up and plant the explosives.
“General, watch your six,” Tinker said as James was coming back down.
James heard the bullets ping off his armor, fired from a Centurion position southwest of the platoon. The drone had registered the area as clean ten seconds ago, but when he checked the feed he could see it had marked nearly a dozen soldiers moving on their position.
Where the hell did they come from?
“Midnight Five, we’ve got tangos coming in off our tails. Grab some cover behind that building and keep them off my ass.” James marked the position, passing it through the ATCS.
“Yes, sir!” the squad leader snapped back. The rest of the soldiers organized quickly, following their sergeant to the marker. They exchanged fire with the Centurions and James cursed when another green circle turned red.
“Bones, get this door open. I’ll be right back.”
“Roger that, sir,” Bones replied.
James charged behind Midnight Five, catching up to them quickly and then outpacing them, heading straight for the Centurion soldiers. They had ducked behind cover once they came under attack, splitting into three groups and using three separate outbuildings for protection.
“General, stay on target,” Tinker said, noticing him breaking away from the bunker.
“Sir, we can’t afford to let them have the rear, especially when we head underground. I can take care of them by the time we pop the can.”
Tinker was silent for a moment. “Understood. Proceed.”
James smiled, continuing on his course. “Midnight Five, cover me.”
“Roger that, General.”
Plasma bolts and bullets flew past him from his rear, laying down a thick line of cover fire as he approached the Centurion’s defensive position. He swiveled to the right, switching to the rifle’s secondary trigger and giving it a light squeeze. A silver sphere thunked from the bottom barrel, arcing across the distance to the corner of the building, and then breaking apart into three separate explosives. They stuck to the building when they hit it, but didn’t detonate.
James used the strength of the powered armor to jump, leaping high into the air. The Centurions tracked him with their weapons, a few of their rounds hitting his armor without punching through. He rotated back the other way, firing his plasma rifle as he came down in the crossfire of the two closest Centurion groups.
He lightly tapped the rifle’s secondary trigger, and the explosives behind him finally went off. A massive fireball billowed outward, taking down the side of the building and setting the Centurions nearby on fire, fragments of cement and superheated metal killing them in an instant.
The explosion distracted the Centurions in front of him. Only for an instant, but it was long enough to down three of the soldiers.
Bullets hit his armor from the right, one of them cutting through his shoulder armor and missing his real arm by fractions of a centimeter.
The third group of Centurions went on the offensive, assaulting him with dense fire. He switched his plasma rifle to stream mode, turning it toward them. A standard Spacer plasma rifle’s stream stretched about ten meters. Tinker’s design more than tripled that. A wave of superheated gas enveloped the onrushing soldiers, decimating the squad in a moment’s time.
James turned around, sprinting back toward the entrance to the underground complex. The Centurion platoon was all but destroyed. Only two remained. James tracked them on his ATCS as they headed away from the fighting, running scared.
Not replicas then. Replicas wouldn’t be such fucking cowards.
“Fire in the hole!” Bones shouted over the comm. James looked back to the bunker in time to see the half-dozen charges go off. Directed toward the blast door’s support mechanisms, the powerful detonations blew chunks of cement off the bunker’s corners, but from the outside the detonation appeared subdued and ineffective. At least until the left panel of the door groaned and started falling out toward them. It landed with a thud that reverberated along the ground and sent up a cloud of dust and smoke.
James switched to his visor’s camera and added a filter to see through the storm. There appeared to be a lift entrance inside.
“Cover me,” he said.
“Roger,” Bones replied.
He walked confidently through the debris, onto and across the fallen blast door. He reached the lift, tapping his finger on the control panel.
OFFLINE
He smiled. Of course; the ants had closed up their hill. The platoon he had taken out likely came from a bolt hole out back.
The blast door was made from steel and lead. The lift doors were a lighter alloy, not intended to prevent entry. He reached between them with his armored hands, yanking the two sides apart, crumpling the metal to move it out of the way. He leaned in and looked down. The shaft vanished into darkness below.
“Tinker, the shaft is tight and close quarters are going to limit the effectiveness of a large team.”
“Confirmed,” Tinker replied. “Standby, I’m sending Dark to your position. Take him and Bones down with you.”
“Roger. Dark, your eta?”
“Twenty seconds, General.”
James didn’t need to stand around while he waited. He snapped open a small compartment in the armor near his ribcage, removing a climb wire. It was thicker than the one he had used in Area 51, this one designed to support the weight of his armor. He secured it to the shaft and then dumped the end down the shaft. He heard the weighted end clink when it hit the top of the lift at the bottom.
“Sir,” Dark said, moving into the bunker.
“General,” Tinker said. “Topside is clear. Hangar is empty. I’m on my way down.”
“Roger,” James said. “Dark, Bones, with me. Midnight Platoon, defensive cover positions. Eyes and ears open.”
He turned back to the shaft. Grabbing the climb-wire, he jumped into the darkness.
/> Chapter 19
James slid down the climb-wire, using the strength of his armored gloves to control his speed. He glanced up to see Major Efreet grab the line above him and start sliding down behind him.
He reached the bottom in no time, landing on top of the cab. Kneeling down, he looked for a release to an access panel and finding this particular cab didn’t have one.
“Dark, Bones – hold up,” he said.
He didn’t need to look up to know they had stopped their descent, hanging static on the climb-wire. He grabbed his plasma rifle from his back, spreading his legs wide and pointing it at the top of the cab. He kept it on stream mode but lowered the intensity before firing down at the cab. The plasma burned through the metal, melting it as James guided it in a rough circle. It took nearly three minutes and left the cell of the weapon nearly spent, but he was able to slam his foot into the center and punch out a large, nearly round excavation in the cab’s top.
“Dark, Bones – let’s go,” he said, dropping through the hole. The bottom doors to the shaft were sealed like the top, and just as easy to open. He tore them apart, revealing a quiet corridor directly ahead. The two Liberators stopped beside him.
They didn’t make any effort to be quiet or cautious as he entered the underground facility. James stomped across the stone floor, the movements of the armor echoing through the hallways. He had lost his link to the main ATCS by delving so deep, though the system had created a new network linking himself, Dark, and Bones. It meant Tinker was out of range too, unable to provide new orders for as long as he was down here.
He wasn’t worried about it. Midnight Platoon had everything well in hand above and he was in control below. His orders were simple enough: Confirm the area was clear. Find the mainframe. Wait for Tinker.
He reached the first intersection in the corridor, coming to a stop in the center and looking left and right along the length of the secondary passages. There was no one in sight. No doubt the Centurions had seen him coming and had gone into hiding or headed for the bolt hole. The Spacers would never have expected an attack from a force as prepared as the Liberators, and probably didn’t want to die today.
