Into the Black: Odyssey One (40 page)

Weston winced, but nodded.

“Further,” Waters spoke up again. “I’m afraid that the Archangels just don’t seem to be carrying enough firepower to really damage the enemy cruisers. We’ll need them for fighter coverage, but they’re not going to shift the odds substantially.”

Eric didn’t like to admit it, but the young man was most likely right. The weapons load for the Archangels wasn’t intended for the level of power being thrown around, in these engagements. Even the heaviest missiles they had available for the fighters were originally intended to sink sea born battleships and dreadnaughts.

Weapons that appeared to be roughly the equivalent of popguns against the alien cruisers they were dealing with.

“All right, I need options. Waters, talk to your department, talk to the civilian researchers, talk to God himself, if you have to, but get them to me,” he told the young man, then turned to Lamont. “Get as many people on the repairs as you can, and have Engineering start siphoning off more power from the reactor to the auxiliary capacitors. I want as many charges in the Pulse tubes as I can get, this time.”

“Aye Aye Captain,” they both replied, stiffening as they gave him a quick salute and turned to their tasks.

Weston sighed, then picked up his induction mic and slapped it onto his jaw. “Commander Roberts.”

“Yes Captain?” The Commanders voice returned a moment later.

“I’m coming up to the Auxiliary Bridge to discuss the current situation, Commander.”

“Yes Sir, I’ll be waiting.”

Eric nodded, letting the link close, and turned to Waters. “Lieutenant, you have the watch.”

“I have the watch, Aye Sir.”

*****

Bermont snarled under his armored helm, the vibrations of the whining, roaring weapon only reaching him in his imagination, as he fired another burst into the scampering, skittering, drones. They’d appear from some crevice or another like wraiths, firing a burst at his team, vanishing around a corner or into some hole they’d found.

The soldiers had managed to avoid any serious injuries, though Bermont himself was sporting a burn on his thigh that was going to sting like a bitch, once the local aesthetic started wearing off. It had been a glancing blow from the enemy’s beam weapons, but it had been enough to cook his armor and by extension his thigh, before he’d managed to roll free.

Most of the others now sported similar wounds, or at least scarred patches on their armor to show how close they’d come to joining the club, but they were getting wise to the enemy’s tactics now and it was showing. The last attack hadn’t scorched anybody, and the Drasin had lost another drone in the attempt.

It was a pity, Bermont thought, that the thermal guidance on their bullets wasn’t able to manage ninety degree turns. They’d have fried a great deal more of the spider like things if they could, but the system only allowed relatively minor course corrections, especially over short distances.

The mission was turning into a gruelling manhunt, or rather, alien hunt through the bewildering streets and alleys of the alien city, sometimes climbing up through immense arcing ‘roads’, and sometimes digging down into the depths of the city, as they went practically underground in their pursuit. And unfortunately Bermont’s own prediction that they were simply going to have to get down and dirty was proving to be altogether too accurate, and the constant pursuit of the devilish bastards was starting to wear on both him and his people.

The light nerve-tingle alarm went off just then, and Bermont let his empty magazine drop to the ground automatically, and fell back slightly as others moved ahead of him to take up the slack. Slapping the new one in took a few seconds, then he was moving forward again, foot crunching the spent clip into the ground as he brought his weapon back up to his shoulder and looked for another target.

*****

“Another empty one.” Savoy said voice calm despite the beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead.

The silence was deafening, as the saying went, and the Lieutenant found himself almost wishing for something to happen. Anything would be good, a dark part of his mind whispered.

A dark and stupid part, of course.

Savoy knew that it was just the tension speaking, demanding some form of release, but the voice was seductive just the same and it took all of his intellect and trained reflexes to shove it down and maintain his current operational stance. He knew that wishing for action was as useless, as it was stupid.

For one thing, no one ever answered wishes. And for another, the demon Murphy just might answer this one.

So he forced his mind into the job and moved as silently as he could onto the next tunnel.

He paused at the tunnel wall beside the branching point, taking a breath as he gathered his thoughts for a moment and looked around and down the tunnel. He wasn’t certain what they were doing, this bunch, whether there was a plan for the tunnels or even if maybe the crash had scrambled what passed for brains and they were just doing some random kind of act.

This time, there was a soft scratching that reached his armor’s sensors and Savoy froze, mind blanking as he looked into the pits of hell.

At the end of this tunnel, there were a dozen, fifty, maybe more of the alien things, he couldn’t tell. They were crawling over each other, scraping at the walls and gathering up the material that fell. Savoy watched as the horde seemed to actually eat the rocks and material, ingesting the minerals automatically, and even going so far as to apparently carry certain bits to one or another of their group and feed it to each other.

“Oh man,” he muttered, knowing that his helmet would insulate all sound. “This is something else. I think…, it might be nest building? Computer, flag this data to be relayed to the research labs on the Odyssey immediately…, Xeno-biology department.”

They were eating rocks, or at least ingesting them. Whether they got any nutrients out of it wasn’t something he could guess at, but there had to be some reason.

Savoy inched forward slightly, trying to get a better view of the activities, only to freeze when one of them suddenly snapped around and stared right at him.

He didn’t make any noise that he could remember, but the beast had apparently spotted him anyway, because in a moment all the rest turned as well. Worse, perhaps, from his point of view was that they did it without any sound or obvious signal. They just seemed to all notice him at the same time.

“Oh shit,” Savoy muttered, backing away.

It was like a dam breaking, the sudden charge of the drones was like the rush of water over the broken floodgates, and that was all the signal, Savoy needed.

He turned and ran, just as another flood burst from a tunnel further down and came racing straight up at him.

“SHIT!!” He screamed as he ran, “Mehn! Burke! I’m coming back and I’ve got company on my ass!”

He didn’t wait for an answer just bolted up the incline of the tunnel at the best speed his suit could give him, which was fairly impressive in all truth. Each step was more of a leap, angled to propel him parallel to the incline, sending him flying for a dozen meters before he would power his other leg down to meet the ground and accelerate him ahead even faster.

The end of the tunnel was approaching at blinding speeds, but his wraparound sensors showed him quite clearly that the room behind him wasn’t all that much better, so Savoy didn’t slow down.

He grabbed the cable of the ‘chute’ in mid leap, keying its automatic lift even as his wrapped it around his hand in desperation move.

The cable went taught almost instantly, the Cee Emm field dropping his weight to near nothing as the ‘chute’s’ thrusters whined and pulled him straight up. Savoy struck the wall as he swung on the end of the ‘chute’s’ line, caroming off it like a billiard ball, but kept his grip on the cable as he shoved the ‘chute’s’ climb rate to maximum.

“Coming through!!” He yelled as the ‘chute’ cleared the tunnel entrance and slammed into the ceiling of the lander, throwing sparks and fragments around as its lateral thrusters kicked in and yanked Savoy suddenly to the right.

His upward motion remained largely unchecked, of course, so he bounced off the ceiling. Before snapping to one side and careening off a wall, slamming into another bulkhead and finally coming to a rest against a charred piece of machinery.

Mehn and Burke didn’t have time to watch his rather rough flight though, as they were watching the tunnel as he flashed past. They both saw the horrific mass that was scrambling up along the walls, like they weren’t a smooth vertical surface.

“TB!” Mehn yelled, twisting a cylinder in his hand and dropping it down into the mass.

“TB!” Burke returned, doing the same thing.

They both turned and sprinted away from the tunnel, grabbing Savoy from where he had fallen and lunged for the rent in the ship that had given them entrance.

The rumble behind them was enough to inform them when the thermobaric grenades detonated, shaking the entire lander as the over pressure waves erupted in the contained space, each reflected shockwave reinforcing the next, as they had been designed to.

A blast of flame and gas erupted out of the tunnel, curving around the bulkheads like a living thing, seeking a way out, just as the soldiers did. It caught up with them as they passed the tear in the hull, slapping them with over ten pounds per square inch of pressure and tossing them from the lander, like toys in a hurricane.

*****

“Savoy! Burke! Mehn!” Major Brinks growled, eyeing the scrambled signals that were once three of his best men. “Damn!”

He was still standing outside the hospital facility and his angry body language was apparent to the guards. It took the Major a few moments to recognize how nervous they were getting and to move off. He didn’t really care about their nerves, but he’d rather not test the discipline of troops he didn’t know.

“God dammit, Lieutenant Savoy, report!” He growled again, keying and rekeying the network reconnect command.

*****

Dust and debris rained down around them, covering the three soldiers in a fine coat of powder, and several hundred pounds of what used to be an alien landing craft, as the rumbling thunder slowly died out.

“Ohhh. . . . fuck,” Burke groaned, pushing himself up to his hands and knees, shunting a half ton of debris off his back. “You guys… dead?”

“Just wishing,” Mehn replied as he shifted some more material and they both pulled a chunk of something off Savoy. “Hey, El Tee. You ok?”

Savoy didn’t move, but his suit sent them a steady stream of medical data, when they queried it that showed him to be alive.

“Come on, Sav,” Burke hooked him under his arms and dragged him back. “Snap out of it. We might have company any time now…”

Savoy groaned, but moved his arm in a flapping motion that really didn’t help much.

“Well, he’s alive and probably awake,” Mehn muttered. “I’ll contact the Major and get a pickup…”

Burke nodded, dragging Savoy along the ground as they both shot glances at the somewhat more dilapidated looking landing craft.

“Oh fuck,” Mehn muttered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Our network link is scrambled.” He told Burke, “Long range frequencies are junked…”

.

“It’ll settle down,” Savoy groaned more than spoke.

Burke looked down at him in surprise, but chuckled slightly. “Welcome back, Boss.”

“Yeah, yeah…,” Savoy croaked, pulling himself free of Burke and climbing unsteadily to his feet. “Reboot the comm suite, both of you.”

“You got it,” they told him, following his instructions.

The software reboot took a few seconds, the network connection wizard activated and sent out a query signal. A few nanoseconds later, after two ‘handshakes’, three passwords, and a gigabit encryption code, the network connected again.

“Major…,” Savoy said painfully, staggering slightly as he tried to walk. “We’ve got trouble.”

Chapter 26

“Tunnels?” Commander Roberts demanded, fists tightening into a clench as he looked at the face on the large screen. “To what end?”

“According to Lieutenant Savoy they seem to be…, eating the minerals in the ground, Commander.” Major Brinks told him, “Using it as resources for breeding or something similar.”

Roberts’ eyes flickered around the room for an instant, taking in the reactions of the others sitting on the Auxiliary Bridge, strapped down against the zero gravity environment. Their eyes widened, some of them seemed to understand the implications, more than others, paling at the thought. Roberts himself had enough of a base in concept technology to understand what was being implied, though he wasn’t certain he was ready to believe that it could possibly exist in a naturally evolved species.

“Major, are you aware of what you’re saying?” He asked grimly.

“I’m afraid so, Major.” Brinks told him, “But it does make the pieces fit, Commander. If they’re able to process minerals in order to fuel themselves, it explains their rate of reproduction.”

“What evidence did the Lieutenant give?”

“His suit’s computer counted no less than two hundred of the Drones in those tunnels. Our worst case estimates is that a lander can’t hold more than a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty,” Brinks replied. “Unless they’ve got some other twist that they’re working, I think his theory is sound.”

“Damn,” Roberts closed his eyes momentarily. “Major, the situation up here is deteriorating quickly. In less than twelve hours, unless we withdraw, we’ll be facing six of the enemy cruisers. If you’re still on the ground then…”

He let the words draw out, but the Major nodded grimly. “Understood, Commander. Do we know what the Captain intends to do?”

“Not yet,” Roberts replied, “I’ll be meeting with him shortly in order to confer… However, I doubt that we’ll abandon the planet easily.”

Brinks just nodded, “all right. I have to get back to work, Commander. I’ll contact you later with an updated sitrep.”

Roberts nodded, “Very well, Major. Godspeed.”

The connection closed and Roberts forced his fists to relax. The situation was rapidly turning from bad to worse and even at best, there was no way that they could take on six of those alien cruisers. The computer had run the scenarios and, even adjusting for the severe lack of imagination in any simulation, the best they could hope for would be to eliminate or disable four of the enemy ships.