Dark Dragons (54 page)

“Then what?” Nate asked.

“Don’t know . . . I’ll have to make shit up as I go.”

“Darren you’ll never make it!” Jorge shouted. 
“Vanessa’s probably dissected by now or growing tentacles out of her back or
who knows what?  They’re using her as bait, man!”

“I know that, but Brutus and I will find her.  You guys
need to stay back and be ready to kill the remaining assault cruisers. 
There’s twelve left, and you can be sure they’ll return.”

Darren slapped a full grenade magazine into his EPG and
retrieved two more from Brutus’s storage.  He plugged his nearly dead
pulse rifle battery into Brutus’s charger and loaded a fresh one into the back
of his rifle.  Needle pistol reloaded.  Gauss gun full.  Drinking
water bladder at ninety-seven percent.  Couple bags of M&Ms in his
bandolier compartment.

“I’m proud of you guys, by the way.  You have executed
magnificently.  The bad guys never saw us coming.  Doom on them.”

‘Thanks,’ Tony said.

Darren spoke with his calm leader voice, stout delivery and
all.  Inside, however, he was dying.  Absolutely scared out of his
gourd.  His half-baked rescue mission had a failure probability so far off
the chart it needed a telescope to be seen.  He would probably never see
Earth again.

Screw it . . . Tomorrow’s Universe and the Next Life . .
. Shit happens.

The dropship parked on Fifth Street in front of the
apartment building nearby looked like it was ready to pull out.  There
were two mobile SAM launchers already secured to the ship, and the rear hatch
was still down, a small squad of Vorvon shocktroopers hovering toward it.

“Alright guys, I see my ride.  I’ll stay in contact
with you.”

Gut turning, mouth dry, Darren bolted for the dropship,
Brutus right behind.  He zeroed in on the dropship’s rear loading ramp
thirty feet away, twenty feet, ten feet. . . .

They went up the ramp undetected, literally next to four
Vorvon shocktroopers who were the last to load.  Two platoons were
fastened to the walls and ceiling, secured by metal bracing arms, their laser
assault rifles mounted next to them.  The last four troopers found four
empty mounting niches, and a pair of metal braces slid out and held them
against the wall.

He felt the dropship suddenly accelerate forward and
up.  They were away.

FIRE
, Darren
commanded.

Still cloaked, Brutus aimed both laser pulse guns at each
wall and swept his blasts down the length of the dropship’s hold.  Then he
came back, raking the ceiling and the shocktroopers secured there.  A few
managed to disengage from their mounts and seize their rifles, but Darren
quickly put them down.  Thirty-eight Vorvon troops never saw their
executioners.

He ordered Brutus forward to overtake the cabin. 
Darren pushed forward behind him and exited invisibility.  The hold was
dimly lit with red lights lining the ceiling.

The cabin’s airlock had what appeared to be a control panel
next to it with a single button.  Brutus de-cloaked and extended his
Omni-Interface Tool, the same device he had used to examine the woman’s
corpse.  Instead of simply pushing the button, the hair-thin filaments
probed around and found the tiny space between the button and the panel. 
The robot was feeling for the electronics underneath.  When it finally
interfaced with the circuits, Brutus used his super intelligent VI processors
to quickly decode the password which unlocked the entryway.

The circular airlock rotated counterclockwise, depressed
inward with a dull thud and four quarter sections of the door slid into the
walls.  A single Vorvon pilot sat in a slender recliner which curved
forward from the bottom to furnish a support for the dropship’s avionics board.

The alien spun its head around just before Darren pumped a
single laser blast through the back of the recliner, killing the creature
quickly.  There was hardly enough room in the cabin for eight-foot tall
Brutus to fit, but he managed.  Dozens of filaments from the robot’s
Omni-Interface Tool slithered across the avionics panel and probed into the
spaces, discovering the circuits inside.

VEHICLE CONTROL ATTAINED -
AWAITING MANEUVER DIRECTIONS.

“Follow the other dropships,” Darren commanded.

He was suddenly conscious of movement directly behind
him.  He spun around, raising his pulse rifle.

“If you’re gonna die trying to rescue Vanessa Vasquez, we
might as well die with you, lover boy,” Nate said. “So shut up and don’t
argue.”

“Yeah, and I want my killer robot back, too,” Jorge said.

Darren felt a lopsided grin form on his face.  “You
guys are my heroes.”

‘Hey guys, you read me?’ Tony asked.

“Loud and clear,” Darren said. “Where are you?”

‘Right beneath you, active stealth on.  I have a heads
up for you——you’re the last dropship in line . . . but my AMDS is barely
detecting a tiny mass signature far ahead of the pack . . . I’m eyeballing it
with the telescope . . . it’s a black flying saucer!  No shit.  Must
have radar-absorbing skin.  It’s over three hundred feet in diameter, but
it only has a weight of around a hundred tons.  Doesn’t look like Vorvon
tech.  What do you make of that?’

Darren recalled a point of conversation with Major LaShaun
Carruthers yesterday.  Something about
toys straight out of Star Wars
. 
“Reverse engineering,” Darren replied.  “Contact Colonel Towsley for a
comm request.  Use call sign ‘Red-David-Four’ for interrogative and ‘Space
Cowboy’ for identification.”

‘Roger that.’

*

Carruthers had his eyes close, reciting a Hindu mantra in
his head and performing an Om meditation.  Other members of Altair Company
strapped in their acceleration recliners around him were also lost in their own
quiet contemplations, whether it was prayer or just mindless staring at the far
wall, Carruthers couldn’t tell.  The men of SAWDOG, like operatives in
other Tier One groups, always adhered to the unwritten decree emphasizing
“shut-the-hell-up time” during infiltration.  Pre-op high-fiving
jocularity and macho dick-waving were left to the Marines and regular Army.

After finishing his meditation, Carruthers opened his eyes
and looked around the SC-138A Andromeda’s spacious hold.  Captain Trevor
Middleton, leader of Vega Platoon and former British 22
^nd
SAS
trooper, appeared to be enjoying the last two inches of his Cuban cigar with a
grin and an agreeable conversation with Captain Jimmy Parker, CO of Sirius Platoon
and former member of SEAL Team Six.  Probably swapping the foulest of
dirty jokes.

There were forty-seven men total in Altair Company. 
The men of the battalion-size Space Warfare Development Operations Group were
culled only from the best: SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, CIA Special Operations
Group and British 22nd Special Air Service.  Altair Company, classified by
those higher up the JSOC ladder as SAWDOG’s Special Assault Mission of
“scientist soldiers,” consisted of the highest paid operatives of the
battalion:  nuclear engineers with space-operable .50-cal CAR15 carbines,
quantum physicists using M112 C4 demolition charges, mathematicians who found
just as much confidence tackling Fermat’s Last Theorem in a Cambridge study
over tea as they did severing a bad guy’s brain from his body with a stealthy
combat knife.

“Killer Nerds” was the preferred nickname being used from
those working the secure offices of the CIA and MI6 who knew of their
existence.  The men of Altair Company, and the rest of SAWDOG for that
matter, simply shrugged off such attempts at barbing humor from those outsiders
who harbored dubious opinions of the battalion’s fortitude.  Their
strutting aplomb and fondness for a life of calculators and grenade launchers
were proudly encapsulated in their emblem of a skull in an astronaut’s helmet
superimposed over the Milky Way, slide rule clutched in teeth, and the motto
emblazoned above:
Ad Stellarum Superamus
—— “To The Stars We Overcome.”

“Major Carruthers,” the Andromeda’s comm officer radioed.
“We have inbound traffic clearing NESSTC COMSEC, call sign Space Cowboy, making
an Achilles One inquiry.  I believe it’s one of Colonel Towsley’s commando
fighter pilots.”

“They have a legit COMSEC register now?” Carruthers asked.

“Yes, sir.  Looks like Colonel Towsley just filed it.”

Carruthers let out a sharp huff of air and opened his AIEAS
suit’s terminal pad on his left forearm.  He thumbed the comm.  “This
is Achilles One, go ahead Space Cowboy.”

‘Hello, Major Carruthers.  This is Tony Simmons. 
Remember me?  I’m the one who told you to go fuck yourself after you told
me ‘only dopes smoke dope.’’

“How can I forget?  What do you want?”

‘Darren, Jorge and Nate have commandeered a Vorvon dropship,
and I’m right behind them.  We’re about to board the bad guys’ moonship,
and I just happened to spot your transport heading in the same direction. 
The boys and I are just wondering what you’re up to?’

“That’s classified.”

‘So is our mission, major.  Maybe we can
un
classify
ourselves and join forces for the cause.’

“My suggestion is for you boys to turn around and scram the
hell out.”

*

“Sorry, Carruthers,” Darren said.  “Can’t do
that.  My bro asked you a legitimate question.”

“I’m going to answer your question with a question,”
Carruthers responded. “What are
you
boys up to?”

Darren stared out the cabin windshield at the other
dropships ahead of them and the moonship growing ever bigger in the
window.  “There’s . . . someone . . . someone I know for a fact is on
board that ship . . . a girl I know.  We’re going after her.”

“GM Chrysler,” Carruthers growled.  “You got to be
kidding?”

“Oh . . . sorry for my lack of military parlance,
major.  We’re here to extract an HVI for immediate exfil out of the AO.”

“High Value Individual, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“My group’s mission is going to conflict with yours in a big
way, so I suggest you forget the damsel in distress rescue mission and go find
yourself another girlfriend.”

“I love the callous machismo you guys ooze.  Do they
teach that in Tough Guy 101.”

“When the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or
one, you’re fucking A.”

“Well, we’re flying a Trojan horse, and Tony’s Dragonstar
has active stealth and invisibility, so the odds of a successful and stealthy
infiltration into the enemy’s stronghold are high on our end.  This can’t
be said for you guys.  How are you expecting to get your three hundred
foot flying saucer past their early-warning defenses and board their
ship?  Knock on the front door and hope for hospitality?”

“We have an effective mode of entry, Mr. Seymour.”

“Look, if we team up, we can help you guys get your ship
inside.  Our VI battle drone is working on our infil right now with its
cyberwarfare suite.  Let’s team up and support each other.  You help
us, we help you . . . so . . . do we have an accord?”

*

Carruthers turned his eyes to the ten foot electric Heavy
Load Jack secured near the loading ramp and the 2,900 lbs object welded to its
frame——an eight-megaton neutron bomb.

“Sure, Darren.  You got it.”

*

“Brutus found us a backdoor, and it’s a cherry,” Jorge said.
“There’s dozens of secondary landing ports all over the moonship, and Brutus
tagged one in the southern hemisphere near that long impact canyon. 
Apparently the port was damaged by the blast and hasn’t been used since, but it
still has access to power and some remote computer control.  Brutus is
setting up over a hundred firewall nodes to hide his computer hacks from the
Vorvon’s VI security protocols, so hopefully he’ll get us in undetected.”

“What about early-warning surveillance sensors?” Darren
asked.

“He’s got three radar nets around the port already shut
down, but Brutus has the bad guys’ central security VI’s thinking they’re still
up.”

Their dropship began to separate from the rest of the
line.  Brutus had them on a heading toward the three hundred mile long
impact canyon.

Darren shook his head.  “This is too easy.”

Jorge detected his concern.  “Relax, ese.  Brutus
could put us down in the middle of Central Park on a summer afternoon
undetected.”

“If you say so . . . Achilles One?  You copy?”

“Go ahead,” Carruthers responded.

“Head for the large impact cannon on the southern
hemisphere.  Hold position about fifty thousand clicks above it, and wait
for us to link up.  Our VI drone just made a radar hole for us to ingress
an abandoned landing port there.”

“Copy.”

*

Tony went in first to recon the area.   The
vertical tunnel leading to the underground port was sealed off by a circular
720 foot shield at the bottom of a large crater that lay less than two miles from
a deep fjord poking out from the main impact canyon.  Other than a
deactivated radar site on a mountaintop ten miles to the southeast, Tony’s
passive sensor sweeps spied no enemy mobiles, SA sites or security trip-wire
stations on the surface.

Brutus opened the shield a crack for Tony to enter, and he
descended into the shaft, his electronic ears tuned for danger, his mental
trigger finger ready.  The shield above him closed, closing off the
sunlight and plunging him into total darkness.  Vertical rows of lights
kicked on, revealing a cylindrical airlock about a thousand feet deep.  At
the bottom, a second shield opened, and Tony dropped through into a cavernous
spherical hangar about two miles in diameter.  Poking out from the walls
were dozens of enormous pad towers thousands of feet long pointing toward the
center of the port.  Each tower had several pads of various sizes mounted
along their lengths.