by Ken Lozito
“Our best approach is to divide our efforts,” Connor said and gestured toward the holoscreen. There was a distant aerial view of the enemy base on display.
Captain Boseman looked at Connor. “Sir, Colonel Quinn’s orders were that you are to have command authority for this mission. We’ll assist you however we can. Just point us in the right direction, and we’ll unleash hell on those bastards.”
Connor snorted inwardly. Sean certainly knew how to simplify things. “Thank you, Captain. I realize the situation is highly irregular.”
Boseman looked at him squarely. “There’s nothing normal about this whole damn situation, sir; however, taking orders from you isn’t an issue.”
Several other members from the Spec Ops team nodded in agreement.
“Time is of the essence, so how do you want to do this?” Boseman asked.
A new message appeared on Connor’s heads-up display from Boseman. It contained a countdown timer for when they were to meet up with the Vigilant for extraction. “What we’re looking at is a snatch-and-grab-type mission. Quick. And it’s going to be dirty. There’s no way we can pull this off without being detected. What we need to do is to influence the enemy response in a way that it gives us enough time to locate and rescue the prisoners,” Connor said.
“What about the civilians?” Boseman asked and nodded toward Gordon.
Connor also looked at the archeologist. “It will be better if you and your team remain with the combat shuttles.”
Gordon shook his head and inhaled explosively. “I’m going with you! I’m not going to just sit by.”
“Gordon,” Diaz said, “the man is being polite. If you come with us, you’ll just be in the way.”
Gordon glared at Diaz and then turned toward Connor.
“The Spec Ops teams are highly trained, and they’re the best at what they do,” Connor said. “It will be best for everyone involved if you and the others stay aboard the shuttles. Allowing you to come with us onto the base is not an option.”
The older man sighed in disgust. “Fine,” Gordon said, and stormed off.
Boseman waited a few moments. “I don’t suppose there’s a way I can persuade you to stay with the shuttle, sir?”
Diaz grinned, and Connor shook his head. He’d never really been a stay-behind kind of person, but he understood why the Spec Ops captain had posed the question in the first place. “I’m afraid we need every able-bodied person for this. Diaz and I are combat-suit qualified. Sims and Alder can help coordinate on the shuttle. You already have combat engineers and a fleet of combat drones.”
“We have heavy ordnance, too, but we’ll only be able to keep the enemy busy for so long. How do you intend to locate the prisoners?” Boseman asked.
Connor smiled. “We’ll knock over a few doors. Listen up, because this is where it gets interesting.”
38
The Nexstar combat suit was as familiar to Connor as an old friend. Although he hadn’t officially worn the suit in almost two years, old instincts and years of training, as well as his upgraded implants, allowed him to transition back instantly. After gearing up, they stood in the cargo area of the combat shuttle, and there were several Spec Ops soldiers ahead of him. Boseman and six other soldiers would be taking point.
The Nexstar combat suit enabled a soldier to move as fast as any rover on open land. After over two hundred years of engineering, the suit’s computers enabled the wearer to be stronger and faster than anyone could possibly be without one.
“They’re a bit tighter than I remember,” Diaz groaned.
“Or it could be that the restaurant business is affecting your waistline,” Connor said.
Diaz blew out a raspberry. “That’s the mark of a happy man right there.” He grinned, and then he became serious. “I never thought I’d be wearing one of these again.”
“Life is full of little surprises,” Connor replied.
Truth be told, Connor hadn’t expected to wear one of these combat suits again either. He’d thought about it a few times. It would have been useful to have one a few months ago when he’d encountered Siloc and the NEIIS military faction. The combat suits were designed to withstand and deliver serious punishment. They’d been engineered for the battlefield, but they were bulky, despite all the advantages. He’d gotten used to the MPS Noah had developed. They were comfortable to wear and felt more like a natural protective layer than a high-tech suit of powered armor. But the combat suit was familiar and opened a path to a lot of memories, and all the ghosts that went with them. Connor thought he’d laid those memories to rest, but he might have been wrong about that.
They deployed the stealth recon drones that had infiltrated the enemy base. No alarms had been raised, and they were holding their combat drones in reserve.
“General,” Captain Boseman said, “all teams are in position, but there’s been a new development.”
Of course…
Sergeant Chase watched the enemy landing area. There hadn’t been a lot of air traffic, but the area had become even quieter in the last few minutes. Jackson and Donovan were on either side of him. Each had their M-Viper sniper rifles aimed at a section of the landing area that the sharpshooters had chosen to cover. The combat suit tactical computer helped with identifying targets. They’d had to circle outside the perimeter of the enemy base to get to this vantage point.
“Sergeant, something is happening with that arch,” Jackson said and gestured away from the landing zone.
Chase looked over. The arch towered over the entire enemy base. There was an open area near the base of it where a bunch of soldiers had gathered. The intelligence provided by General Gates indicated that the arch functioned as some kind of gateway.
“The other teams must have seen it, but I’ll let Boseman know,” Chase said, and an alert appeared on his internal heads-up display. “Look alive, boys, it’s time to bring down the thunder.”
The three-man fire team focused on the landing area. A heavy combat shuttle flew over them, and twin plasma cannons rained fiery hell on the enemy ships. After the attack run, the shuttle banked to the left and sped away. They’d have a few moments before the shuttle returned for another run, and then it was on the three of them to prevent the enemy from reaching their ships.
Armored soldiers scrambled among the blazing remnants of their base. Chase picked one and squeezed the trigger. He could hear shots taken on either side of him as Jackson and Donovan each took out targets of their own.
Connor watched as several teams shifted their positions to cover the arch. The gateway opened as before, and the enemy soldiers were focused on it. At that precise moment, the assault teams opened fire, blindsiding the enemy. Combat drones carrying heavy gauss cannons flocked to the area. They’d achieved total surprise, but now the clock was ticking.
Connor turned his attention to the wallscreen on the shuttle, which showed multiple video feeds from the stealth recon drones.
Sims monitored the screens with the eyes of a hawk. The recon drones were targeting the buildings near the interior of the base. Several screens flicked off as the drones were destroyed by enemy fire.
The heavy combat shuttle rose into the air and flew toward the enemy base. They’d make a low-altitude drop. The interior went to emergency lighting as the loading ramp lowered. They were over the base, and Connor saw enemy soldiers running toward the arch. A few glanced up at the combat shuttle as it sped past overhead, but they never got a clear shot.
“Go, go, go,” Captain Boseman bellowed.
Spec Ops soldiers near the loading ramp leaped out of the shuttle, and Connor followed. There were a few seconds of free-fall, and then the combat-suit jets engaged, slowing his descent. He landed hard on a rooftop and took several steps, moving to the side with his weapon ready. He heard the thumps of the other soldiers landing behind him. There were twelve of them in this group. Another twelve would drop off on the other side of the base, and they would work their way toward the center.
&n
bsp; The buildings were close together. They ran to the edge and leaped to the next rooftop using suit jets to give them an extra boost. Connor watched as Captain Boseman directed his squad ahead to clear the area before the rest of them came over.
Connor glanced at the countdown for when the Vigilant would return. There wasn’t much time. He went over to Boseman. “We need to head to the set of smaller buildings northwest.” Most of the buildings didn’t go above six meters, but there were some that were up to twelve meters in height.
“We have a team of recon drones in that area. I’ll have them prioritize those buildings,” Boseman replied.
As they made their way toward their destination, none of the enemy soldiers came onto the roofs of any of the nearby buildings, and Connor hadn’t seen anything that resembled a sensor or camera. It was as if they’d never expected an attack, which was a severe oversight for base operations. Or perhaps it was irrelevant based on the enemy’s capabilities of mounting a counterattack.
The stealth recon drones were equipped with high-powered plasma cutters that enabled them to cut through most alloys. In this case, the drones would punch a hole large enough to peek inside and do a quick assessment, which would be monitored from the combat shuttle.
“Stop,” Sims said, his voice coming over the general comlink to the team. “You need to get to the ground to the right of your position and go straight.”
The Spec Ops team leaped to the ground.
“What’s wrong with the other building?” Connor asked.
“There are a lot of soldiers in the area, and I keep losing recon drones. I think it might be a barracks or something, so that’s not where they’d be holding the prisoners. North of your position about fifty meters is a small, one-room building. It’s the only one in the immediate area that looks to have had a lot of foot traffic. A bit suspicious for such a small building, wouldn’t you think?”
Connor looked ahead and gestured for Boseman to go toward the small building.
“I have a drone there now and—yes, that it! There’s a ramp that goes down inside,” Sims said.
“Good work,” Connor said.
They closed in on the smaller building and entered. At the bottom of the long ramp that led underground was a door. The door controls were similar to what they’d found at NEIIS sites on New Earth. They tapped the controls and went through. They were at the end of a long corridor with tawny-colored walls. Connor saw several other corridors that branched off farther away. They sent the small recon drones to scout the area ahead.
Boseman brought them to a stop when they reached the first adjacent corridor. The two soldiers on point checked around the corner and gave the all clear. Doors lining the corridor were spaced out about every three meters. There were narrow slits at the center of the doors, but they were closed, preventing them from seeing inside. One of the Spec Ops soldiers reached toward the door controls and opened it while the other covered the entranceway with his weapon. Inside was a shaggy, long-limbed, snarling beast. It lunged toward them, and the Spec Ops soldier quickly closed the door.
“Alright, we’ll break up into teams of three. I want two weapons on every door as they’re being opened,” Connor said.
The other soldiers acknowledged the order, and Captain Boseman stayed with Connor and Diaz. The CDF Spec Ops captain brought out a thick, tri-barreled shotgun. There was a glowing power core on the side.
“Nice,” Diaz said, admiring the weapon.
“Better for short range, but you couldn’t use it without a combat suit to absorb the kick this thing generates. They were reverse-engineered from the weapons the Vemus heavies carried, which they likely got from the old NA Alliance military,” Boseman said.
Connor had never seen the weapon before, but he wasn’t too surprised that the CDF continued to develop their weapons capability.
Most rooms they checked were empty, but they were clearly holding cells big enough to house multiple occupants. Connor noticed tiny symbols above the door controls that scrolled from left to right. They looked like the NEIIS language, or at least some of the symbols were similar, but they disappeared too quickly for him to read. This was taking too long. There were too many doors to check.
Connor heard weapons fire from nearby.
“Contact!” a soldier shouted.
Connor spooled through the recon drone video feeds. “Go back to your men, Captain. We’ll finish this corridor and circle around to meet you on the other side,” Connor said.
Boseman looked as if he was going to object, but he didn’t.
Connor and Diaz continued checking the doors, and when they reached the end of the corridor, they could only turn left, where there was another hall of even more doors.
“We can’t check all these,” Diaz said.
Connor checked the room nearest them. “You’re right.”
“What do you want to do?”
Connor started shouting the names of the colonists on the other submarine. Diaz joined him. They didn’t check every door but did stop randomly to look inside. They paused for a few moments and heard pounding against a door farther down the corridor. Connor hastened to that door, and several enemy soldiers appeared.
“Watch out!” Diaz shouted.
Connor brought up his weapon and fired. The force of the three-round burst knocked the enemy soldiers back but didn’t penetrate their armor. Connor switched the ammunition to explosive rounds. He fired another three-round burst and Diaz did the same. After the concussive blast, the group of enemy soldiers went down and didn’t get up.
Connor opened the door and saw Isla Summers standing in the doorway, wide-eyed and frightened. Her eyes narrowed in disbelief as she recognized him.
Connor glanced behind Isla at the holding cell. “Where are the others?”
“They kept coming and taking us away. The others were in rooms all around us, but they kept coming. They wouldn’t stop,” Isla said.
Diaz quickly checked the other rooms and found several colonists huddled inside their cells, too afraid to move. It took them a few moments to realize that they were being rescued. Sounds of fighting could be heard from a nearby corridor.
Connor checked ahead of them where the enemy soldiers had come from. “Isla, I need you to tell me where Flint and Rollins are. Where did they take the others?”
The older woman shook her head. “Miller and Smith died at the sub. I don’t know. Once they took them, they never came back.”
Connor opened the comlink to Boseman. “We found some of the prisoners, but they took others away. We’ll continue to look for them.”
“Understood. We have heavy resistance over here, and we need to start making our way out. I’m going to split the team up to draw them away from you, and we’ll meet up at this location,” Boseman said, sending Connor a map. It was partial, but it was of the immediate area that the recon drones had covered.
“Understood,” Connor said. He looked at the others. “I don’t want to leave anyone behind. Did any of you see or hear anything that might help us find the others?”
One of the men raised his hand. “They took them that way, away from here, and I think they turned right.”
“Thanks, what’s your name?”
“McPherson. They took my friend,” McPherson said and pointed down the corridor away from them.
Connor opened the compartment for his sidearm and handed the pistol to McPherson. They went to the end of the corridor and turned to the right, which led away from the fighting. The corridor began a steady decline, and there were no other cell doors. There were several adjoining corridors, and Connor heard sounds of fighting farther away. There was a loud boom that shook the walls.
“That was one of ours,” Diaz said.
Connor looked down one of the corridors to see that it was clear and then gestured for the others to cross. He and Diaz alternated in this way as they drew steadily closer to the door at the end of the corridor.
Connor told the colonists to stand behind
him. McPherson covered their flank while Diaz opened the door and Connor stepped inside. In the middle of the room was the empty shell of an enemy’s power armor, and to the side of that was a large, pale-bodied shape lying on the ground. Connor spotted Flint and a young woman a short distance away. They weren’t moving, but he was still able to detect a biometric reading from both of them. The others came in, and Isla rushed toward the young woman.
“Here, use this,” Connor said. He handed her the first-aid kit from his combat suit.
Isla took out two medical packs and went to kneel next to the young woman. She pressed the pack against the side of the young woman’s neck and activated the nanobots inside. She then did the same for Flint. The biometric readings showed that each of them had sustained extensive wounds and a few broken bones.
“We need to carry them. Come on over and help,” Connor said.
The other colonists gathered around and picked up the two unconscious prisoners.
“Diaz, start leading them out of here. I’ll be right behind you,” Connor said, and gestured toward the power armor, indicating he wanted to take a closer look.
Diaz nodded and led the others away.
Connor walked over to the empty power armor and opened a comlink to the shuttle.
“Go ahead,” Sims said.
“I need Lockwood,” Connor replied.
When Lockwood joined the comlink, Connor had him switch to a private channel.
“I’m ready. What do you need?” Lockwood asked.
“How fluent are you with the NEIIS computer systems?” Connor asked.
“I’m proficient, sir. Why do you ask?”
“Because I think there might be an open data connection to this power armor. I’m going to link you to my combat suit so you can observe.”
“Wait a minute, are you saying that the systems here are NEIIS in origin?” Lockwood asked.
Connor grimaced. “Not exactly. It’s almost like the NEIIS copied this system, but I can’t be sure. It’s definitely more advanced than what we’ve seen on New Earth.” He stepped toward the power armor and paused. “Tommy, there’s something I need to know. Noah had a talent for getting into systems he wasn’t supposed to. Do you have similar skill sets?”
