Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) (12 page)

“Reaper Ground Force Reaper Actual, massive energy surges inside the ziggurat, the signatures indicate sizeable machine components inside the structure itself,” came the monotone voice of the Reaper command dispatcher,  “Penetrate, neutralize, and secure. Over.”

“Boss Ulanti, ascend now and meet us at the top, we’re going in,” said Boss Marsters as he checked the fire toggle on his rifle and switched it to three round burst, "Advance to the apex of the structure and sweep in behind us. Bravo Platoon is pulling security. Reaper Actual, Squad Marsters and Squad Hyst entering hostile structure time now." 

"Roger Tango Leader," answered the crisp voice on the other end of the line.  

"Reapers on me," Marsters ordered as he continued downwards, flipping on both his body lights and gun lights to illuminate the darkness below.  

The marines filed one by one through the opening in the top of the ziggurat, Samuel descending just after Bianca Kade. The marine moved her gun light back and forth with trained precision, taking care to illuminate the blind corners of the staircase as it emptied into a large empty chamber. They had been sleeping together since before the conflict on Tetra Prime. Both had thought themselves simply soldiers who needed each other briefly in a few moments of weakness and battle fatigue. However, she and Samuel had re-kindled their former entanglement in these last weeks on Vorhold, both telling themselves after the horrors of downspire they needed the simple comforts of human intimacy.

Neither claimed to want a relationship, both had spouses back on Baen 6, though it was becoming clear that something more had grown between them. Samuel knew that it would affect his judgment in battle, possibly hers as well, even though Jada and George had seemed to make it work for several years, neither of them were additionally distracted by the guilt of betrayal.

Here he was, on some distant world fighting to get his family away from the grinding society of Grotto, all the while soiling the very vows that bound him to his wife.

He loved Sura, deeply, and yet as he entered the chamber alongside Bianca he knew that if it came to it he would die to keep her alive, and not just because they were military comrades.

He and Bianca had stood together against the guns of Helion and the claws of downspire, seen friends die, there was a bond in that he couldn’t share with Sura. No matter how much he loved her or how much she struggled to understand, there would always be that dark place in him, and only a fellow marine could burn away the shadows of it. Bianca had been the one to articulate that particular disconnect between herself and her husband. She had only married in the last few years, after Tetra Prime, but already she saw that being a marine was tearing unavoidable holes in her relationship.

He mused that it would be easier just to die down here, and leave Sura to find a new life with a better husband, one more worthy of her trust. He knew that was the coward's path, he had come too far to just lie down and die, regardless how much of a mess he'd made of his marriage and his own heart.

Scuttling sounds snapped Samuel's mind back into focus and he raised his rifle toward where he thought the sound had come from. So did the other marines, but each of them aimed their weapons in different directions.

With all of their lights brought to bear it became clear that the chamber walls were covered in hieroglyphs, laser carved with high levels of detail. There were multiple archways, each appearing to angle downwards.

None of the marines could make sense of what they were seeing. Many of the images seemed to depict the gun spiders that they'd seen outside, along with humanoid looking bodies stacked atop one another in what looked to be either mass graves or perhaps some kind of assembly line. As the scuttling sounds returned, Samuel noticed another glyph of what looked to be a very tall man with long hair standing atop what he assumed to be a facsimile of the ziggurat itself. Just below the glyph was an open archway, the darkness leading deeper into the tunnel broken by a dull-green glow. It reminded him of the half-light in downspire, that sort of ambient illumination that seemed to come from nowhere.

Boss Marsters, who stood in the center of the chamber, slung his rifle and pulled Vol's pistol from the holster on his hip.

"Circle up, defensive pattern," came Wynn's cold voice over the com-bead. The words had barely left his mouth and the nine other marines had taken up their positions around him, a formation which allowed them to have at least one or more guns covering each archway.  

Boss Marsters rapidly used the revolver to fire a flare round down the length of each dark corridor. As the bright red rounds sped through, they briefly illuminated several gun spiders that had been slinking across the walls and ceiling of the passageways. As the rounds impacted in the distance they could see more hostiles gathering. Boss Marsters quickly holstered his pistol and unslung his rifle racking the slide.  

"Weapons free, three round bursts only," ordered the platoon leader as he raised his rifle and spat a burst down the corridor to his left, and the impact of his bullets sent sparks flying as they ripped into one of the gun spiders. "We have dominant position, bottleneck them and no explosives. Pour it on people." 

The marines began firing. There were only ten of them, but they were able to output a tremendous amount of firepower. Harold and Ben each held an archway alone, and their sustained fire chewed through the gun spiders before the hostiles had time to lock in their firing solutions. Both machine gunners could see other gun spiders down the passageways, holding back as if they'd realized they were walking into a kill zone. The other passageways were not so easily managed, and several of the gun spiders were able to train their weapons on the marines and return fire.

Samuel hurled himself to the left as tracer fire tore through the empty air where he'd been standing. The marine landed hard on his shoulder, but managed to return fire from his prone position. Samuel wasn't sure if he'd hit the enemy. His salvo pushed one of the spiders away from its partial cover in the shadows and Bianca was able to punch several bursts through its chest, causing it to collapse to the floor in a heap of dented metal and leaking fluids.

Other marines were not so lucky. Samuel heard the shout from one of the marines in Squad Marsters as hard rounds from the gun spiders riddled him with ragged holes. Holland fired with his rifle pulled tight to his hip and reached down to help Samuel up.

No sooner had the marine gained his feet than two rounds struck Holland in the leg, one shearing off a piece of his shin guard and the other pulping his right kneecap. The medic howled and collapsed, threatening to pull Samuel down with him. The marine was able to keep his footing and hold onto Holland to prevent him from slamming down face first.

Samuel took a knee and ignored the fight to focus on digging through Holland's squad med-kit for the right tools to seal the wound. The round had completely disintegrated the medic's knee. The marine trusted that Bianca would cover him and found the synth skin as well as a massive pressure bandage.

Observing the effects of the machine race's bullets, Samuel was deeply disturbed at the level of technological advancement. Judging by the wound patterns, the rounds were capable of piercing both armor and then flowering within the flesh once it was through.

Modern soldiers, even well-funded elites like Imago and his Folken, were only able to have one sort of round or the other, because of the way the bullets had to be manufactured. For a bullet to have the kind of on-board data to determine when it had punched through armor and then through flesh so that it could trigger a flowering effect, was beyond current technology. Certainly, there were large artillery rounds capable of similar feats, though for each and every round to effectively be a 'smart round' with onboard secondary propulsion systems, couldn’t even begin to be cost effective on such a scale as small arms ammunition.

Samuel finished dressing the wound, having successfully distracted himself from the battle around him with his musings on the enemy projectiles. Moments later he was back in the fight. Bianca had stood just ahead of him, placing her body between him and Holland, and had nearly emptied the second magazine that she'd taped together with her first.

Samuel fired from his crouching position, adding his controlled bursts to Bianca's, giving her time to reload when she went dry. Within seconds the furious firefight tapered off, and after a full minute of fighting the gun spiders had withdrawn from the passageways. Without needing to be told everyone began reloading, checking each other for injuries, and policing their casualties while others in the group pulled security.  

"Boss, I saw one of them dragging a legionnaire across the back of the passage, just like out in the city, why would they do that?" asked Spencer over his shoulder as he reloaded his rifle and kept a wary eye on the threatening shadows in the passageway, "I thought they were just machines." 

"This is an alien world, Green, they might be more than machines, we have no way of knowing until we secure this objective," Boss Marsters said flatly. He looked up and gave a curt nod to Boss Lucinda and her squad as they descended the stairs, followed by Gamma and Whiskey Platoon, "Boss Ulanti, coms aren't working well down here, status on the exterior?" 

"Whatever energy field the entrance to this structure is emitting must baffle sound in addition to killing coms," answered Lucinda as her squad and the other platoons spread out to help pull security on the room, "We've been repelling counter-assaults by the gun spiders in earnest since you descended. The last fifteen minutes have been rather colorful, looks like for you too." 

"They could have overrun us if they'd come in force," Boss Marsters replied while he took stock of the now sizeable assault force. "This was just a probe; we can expect to encounter stiff resistance the further we push." 

"We'll follow your lead, Tango," said Boss Uric of Gamma Platoon, eliciting a series of nods from the bosses of Whiskey platoon. "We spent enough time downspire to know how bad the Basin shift was. If we're going to go down another fight-hole I'm glad it’s with you people." 

"So it is, then," said Boss Marsters, who looked around the chamber for a moment, then began issuing orders. "Hyst, get some repelling line and secure Holland to the telescoping stretcher in the squad kit. Boss Uric, I need your man over there, Gunderson, to haul my medic back to the surface. Gunderson, once you're up top find Boss Harker of Bravo and tell him I need at least one of his squads to come down and hold this chamber, preferably the whole platoon if he isn't too pressed by the enemy. The rest of us are going to form up by squads and secure this objective." 

Boss Marsters walked around the chamber as everyone separated by squad. Gunderson started his strenuous climb up the steps dragging Holland on the stretcher and Samuel joined what remained of his squad.  

"I wonder which passage we're going to end up taking, they all look the same," muttered Ben to Samuel and Abasi Hondo, one of the Reaper veterans from a different fleet who had mustered out as part of Tango Platoon to fill out the positions opened in Squad Ulanti by their casualties on Vorhold. "We're flying blind here." 

"Your com-bead is open, Takeda, though you make a fair point," said Boss Marsters as he approached the marines. Averting his eyes, Ben mumbled an apology.

"We have five passages to choose from, and each one of them is crawling with gun spiders and who knows what else. We have enough squads to push two down four passages. Last passage has to be one squad. Prybar, that's on you. Take Hondo from Squad Ulanti to replace Holland. Get it done, marines." 

With that the assembled marines began moving out as Boss Marsters called out squad marching orders and directed them to push forward into their respective passages.

When the passageway for Squad Hyst was pointed out, Samuel shouldered his rifle and started cautiously moving forward, with Ben at his side and the rest of the squad following them. Samuel noticed just as he entered the passage that he'd ended up being assigned the one that had the glyphs with all of the stacked bodies and the lone figure.

The sight of those glyphs was burned into his mind, and he found it very difficult to shake off the sense of dread that crept steadily into his awareness. The marine took a deep breath and loosened his death grip on the rifle, doing his best to find his battle calm as he reminded himself that he'd survived everything the universe had thrown at him so far.

  Ben caught the movement first. He squeezed the trigger of his heavy machine gun to send a salvo of rounds down the passageway and into the chest of a gun spider that had been attempting to flank them by clinging to the ceiling during its approach.

The marines followed Samuel's lead as he sprinted forward, keeping his rifle at the ready, not wanting to be caught in the kill zone and suffering the same fate as the gun spiders that first attacked them. The squad poured out of the passageway and into a smaller chamber, also covered in glyphs from ceiling to floor. Ben's heavy machine gun cleared out two more gun spiders as the rest of the squad bracketed them with rifle fire and drove them into Takeda's cone of fire.

There were two archways leading out of the chamber, one sloping up and another sloping down. Samuel paused in his advance to study the glyphs, hoping that he could find something more to go on besides which way was up and which was down. As he pondered, another gun spider attacked from the downward sloping passageway, managing to score a few grazing hits on Hondo before Ben's heavy gun tore it apart.