Battle Earth VII (28 page)

"How do we get to the conference room?"

"Just carry on the way you were going. It'll take you there."

"And this secret landing pad?"

"Only accessible from a room marked as Storage 24B, or through the outside landing doors which are completely hidden until open."

"Then we’d better move. I won't kill you, but neither can I let you spill the beans."

 
Taylor smacked the man across the head with his pistol, knocking him unconscious.

"How can we make it before Armand flies outta here?”

“We run, Riley, and we hope,” replied Taylor. He jumped forward and carried on at a pace far beyond safe when they were in such proximity to the enemy.

He lifted up his comms unit. “Eddie, are you okay?"

“Yep, just about!”

“Bring Adrienne around to the east side of the mountain, ASAP!”

“Got any co-ordinates on that?”

“No, I don’t. Just do it, and be ready to give pursuit!”

“In this piece of junk?”

“We’re running out of options. Armand might be leaving shortly from a hidden landing area on the east side. You must not let him leave. Just make it work!”

“You got it,” he responded wearily.

“Any craft they have will outpace the Adrienne, surely?”

“Sure will, Riley.”

They carried on deeper into the facility, finding no resistance for several minutes. They finally arrived at a broad atrium that was clearly the entrance to something important; the conference hall they had been looking for. He could see two Mechs guarding the door, but they did not have time to take cover. Taylor’s rifle opened up, as did several others beside him. The two Mechs frantically tried to return fire and got off a few wild shots as they were bombarded by a salvo from the marines. There was a keypad security system to get in, but the doors didn’t look all that strong. Mitch fired a few shots into the pad and then the centre locking mechanism before getting his fingers through a small hole he’d blasted.

The door began to open ever so slowly when out of nowhere Jafar came thundering in against the other door, bursting through with little resistance at all. The steel door was launched into the room. The rest of them were left speechless.

“Come in!” he called.

They rushed through the breach and could immediately see a doorway at the far side of the room. It had been left open in haste.

“We can’t be far behind, go!” Taylor ordered.

As he passed along the length of the table, he noticed a number of documents scattered across it, the kind only kept in hard copy for security reasons. He wanted to stop and take what he could but knew they did not have a moment to spare.

The door ahead led to a square corridor of three metres wide. It ascended relatively gently in an almost straight line.

“Faster!” He got to a sprinting pace, knowing Armand wouldn’t have a suit on that would allow the kind of pace they could manage. He hoped it would be enough. As they were reaching the top, they could see evidence of daylight and could hear an engine power up.

“Shit,” Taylor muttered.

They reached the very top and broke out into the landing zone. It stored just three small high-speed shuttles. One of them had got a metre of the ground. Mitch looked to the two spare craft in the hope of taking one, but could already see bullet holes through the turbine housings.

“Rains! Stop that ship!”

“With what, Colonel?”

He lifted his rifle and took careful aim at Armand’s ship. It was beginning to gain forward momentum. He squeezed the trigger and fired off three well-aimed shots at one of the two engines. He lowered his rifle and watched in hope. The pulsing engine spluttered and began to die. He knew he had done it.

“Nice shooting!” Riley said as he reached the landing pad beside Taylor.

“It’s not enough. He’s still getting away.”

Engines roared above them, and the Adrienne lowered down twenty metres from the rock edge. The side door was open and one of Eddie’s fellow pilots at the door.

“Come on, jump!”

Riley looked over the edge. It was a several thousand-metre drop. He knew the boosters on his suit should keep him safe, but that wasn’t enough to make him feel sick to the stomach.

“Uhhh… Colonel,” he began to hesitate.

He turned around. Taylor had gone back a way to get a run up.

“What? D’you wanna live forever?”

He ran, using the power of his suit go forwards into the wide doorway of the ship and landed rather ungraciously. He tumbled over into a roll, coming to a rest on one knee.

“Come on!”

“Oh, what the hell,” muttered Riley. He took a running jump and launched out into the sky. He had underestimated the distance slightly and struck the lower edge of the entrance to the hatch. Taylor jumped forward, sliding across the deck on his front. He came out slightly over the edge and took a firm hold of one of Riley’s arms. He looked down just for a moment at the rocky crag below and realised how close they had come to death, but it was too late to go back now.

Taylor hauled Riley on board. The others were already leaping in, having learnt from his experience. Taylor yelled into his comms.

“All aboard, after that bastard!”

“Chase him down!”

“I’m trying!” Rains shouted.

Taylor could just about see Armand’s ship in the distance. They weren’t losing them, but neither did they appear to be making any progress.

“Eddie, we don’t get him, and this was all for nothing.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Colonel, not like we have any weapon systems to slow them down any further.”

“This thing going all out?”

“Bet your ass. It’s a goddamn miracle she keeps going.”

“My shot did some damage to one of their engines. How come we aren’t gaining on them?”

“Well you did some damage sure, but she’s a high speed transport, and we’re in the equivalent of the old school bus.”

Taylor sighed and drooped his head. It felt like it was all over.

“Wait, that turbine you hit, it’s just lost all power. We’re gaining on them!”

Cheers rang out from the marines behind.

“Wait, they’re banking. Where the hell are they going?”

“They know they can’t outrun us, so they’re going for a place of safety. Local forces will already be scrambling. I’d say we got about fifteen minutes max until we’re swamped.”

“All right, so where are they heading?” asked Rains.

“Somewhere as secret as Mittenwald, somewhere with allied Mechs, somewhere with troops who would have no trouble gunning us down, not even if they knew who I was.”

“Great, where is that?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

“In fifteen minutes? Cutting it a little fine, aren’t we?”

“Love to say I had a better option.”

“They’re levelling off…and starting a descent.”

“Stay with them. Follow them down and get on the ground ASAP.”

Rains nodded in agreement.

“What is that place, Eddie?”

No idea, Colonel, just looks like another mountain to me.”

“That ain’t no mountain!” Riley screamed.

Lights pulsed below and anti aircraft flak burst around them.

“No missiles?” asked Taylor.

“This ain’t enough for you?” asked Eddie, as the craft shook from the impacts.

“Just makes me suspicious, is all.”

“They aren’t trying to shoot us down. They’re trying to force us to turn back.”

“Why?” he asked, but he already knew the answer.

“So they really don’t want to kill us.”

“Not that I don’t want to believe that, but why?”

“A platoon of US Marines going down on UEN soil when war is about to break out. Armand will do anything to avoid bringing the US into this war.”

“Yeah, well good luck with that.”

“Don’t knock it. That fact might just keep us alive to get this job done.”

Taylor watched intently on the view screen as the shuttle landed roughly on a ledge of the mountain. As they ground to a halt, a number of figures rushed to their aid.

“Guess that’s our target?” asked Eddie.

Taylor grunted in approval.

“They may not want to shoot us down now, but you know once we have the Councillor all bets are off, you know that right?”

“You just worry about flying this hulk, Eddie, and leave the fighting to us.”

“Not much of a relief after there’s another missile coming for my ass.”

Taylor didn’t know how to answer that as he knew it was an almost certainty. He turned to the others.

“They may not want to shoot us out of the sky, but once we’re on the ground, armed foreign operatives, they will not hesitate to start shooting again!”

“Making a lot of assumptions aren’t you?” whispered Parker.

“Only going on what we have seen so far. All I do know is we have to be fast about this.”

“No shit.”

Eddie brought them in as fast as he could and came close to overdoing it. The landing gear hit the ground hard, and they could feel it buckle a little as they slid a few metres to a halt.

“Goddamn miracle we weren’t shot out the air.”

“We’re made of miracles, Eddie. We’re the Immortals!”

He leapt out the side door of the ship without a word to the others. He knew they’d be close behind him. He wished he had a plan beyond jumping into the unknown, but there was no time. He hit the ground running despite the imminent danger, but was surprised to see not a single enemy in sight.

Taylor rushed first to the shuttle that had come to an even rougher landing than they had. He looked through the door that had been left open and found nothing. He looked out and around the site. They were on a small hidden landing zone on the side of a mountain in a seemingly tranquil hiking spot.

“Where the hell are they?” asked Riley.

“Must be somewhere more important than the Mittenwald. Armand would never risk revealing this place unless he had absolutely no choice.”

“All right, but where?” asked Silva, “Nothing here but nature and us.”

He looked down to the footsteps coming from the shuttle.

“Sergeant, time to go back to basics.”

Silva looked down at the tracks and looked sheepish for not having gone to them sooner.

“Tracking not something we’ve had to do in years, not like finding the enemy was ever much of a difficulty.”

“Say that again.”

They followed four sets of tracks between some rocks until they finally found something else manmade, a thick steel double doorway, hidden by nature of its remote location and inability to see from the air.

“Explosives now, everything we have!” Taylor hollered.

A few of the marines passed magnetic charges forward, but it was all they had.

Five? That’s it?
Taylor thought.

He didn’t let his doubt spread by voicing his mind and placed the charges quickly, with just a ten second delay to start simultaneously.

“Cover!”

He ducked behind a nearby boulder and prayed. The explosion erupted and rocked the ground beneath them. Taylor had become accustomed to constant ear splitting noise during the war, but he had always hoped in those moments for the survival of him and his comrades. But now all that was gone. Their lives were of no concern to him in that moment. He knew all that mattered was getting Armand.

He got up. The doors had completely vanished from sight. It was a welcome surprise to them all.