Into the Black: Odyssey One (39 page)

No one had anything to say to that, so Savoy just swung his rifle around the corner of the rip, watching the results from the built-in camera that beamed back to his HUD, as he swept the interior.

“Looks clear,” he said, pulling back. “Mehn, cover me.”

“You got it, boss.”

Savoy crouched down slightly and jumped up in a calculated motion that brought him up to the lip of the tear and landed just inside. His suit systems automatically adjusted to the low light levels, bringing up a computer enhancement over his HUD that includes thermal and light amplification. Savoy automatically rejected the suit’s query concerning active night vision systems while stepping inside slowly.

“It’s a wreck in here,” he muttered after a moment.

“Say that again, Boss,” Burke replied, landing just where Savoy had been and looking around for himself. “Must have been one rough landing.”

“Don’t let your guard down,” Mehn reminded them both. “We saw that these things are tougher than you’d expect.”

“Right,” Savoy nodded, pushing forward slowly as he looked around. “More to the point, I don’t see any bodies, boys.”

“Shit,” Burke muttered, crouching just beside the tear, as Mehn jumped up. “I don’t like the sounds of that.”

“Can’t say I much like it, either,” Savoy shrugged invisibly within his armor. “But thems the cards we’ve been dealt. I’m going to move further in. Give me some cover, okay you two?”

“We got your back, Boss,” Mehn said instantly.

Savoy just nodded as he swung his rifle around a corner, scanning quickly before he ducked around in a crouch to let his suits more effective sensors give him a second opinion. Nothing was in sight, so he rose slowly to his feet and moved forward again.

*****

Admiral Tanner looked at the face on the screen and frowned, “What is it, Saren?”

“The Ithan wishes to speak to you,” the man said stiffly.

“I told you to bring her here, as fast as possible…”

“I am… We are…, that is,” the man replied. “However she insists on speaking to you as we travel.”

“Very well,” Tanner sighed, “Hand her the comm.”

The image jiggled a little and came to rest on the smooth faceless armor that was even disconcerting over a Comm.

“Admiral,”

“What is it, Ithan? I’m quite occupied at the moment…,” Tanner began.

“The soldiers from the Odyssey have incurred injuries,” Milla interrupted him, “Their emergency craft has been redirected to rescue pilots, lost in the outer system, so they have no local medical support, at this instant. I’m told that they can, of course, redirect a shuttle to supply them with what they need, but it will take time…”

Tanner grimaced, but nodded. “One moment, Ithan.”

He stepped back while moving over to the control pit that handled ground operations. “Nero!”

“Yes, Rael?” The big man asked, stepping up.

“The soldiers from the ship have had casualties, they would appreciate medical aid,” Tanner told his counterpart. “Would security concerns permit redirecting them to one of your hospitals?”

“Of course,” the big man replied instantly. “I’ll provide you with a list immediately and…”

“No need,” Tanner smiled, “It’s in Central. I’ll inform Ithan Chans of the locations.”

“Please do not neglect to inform me of which ones they are directed to,” Nero told him. “I will ensure that they are received without undue trouble.”

Tanner nodded and headed back.

*****

“Roger that, Miss Chans. Can you locate these sites on an aerial map?” Brinks asked, looking at Milla’s tense face over his HUD.

“I… I think so,” she said hesitantly. “Can you show me this map?”

“One second…” Brinks activated one of the command override circuits while snaking into her system using the ‘Boot Camp’ backdoor. He called up the Carnivore data and fed it to her via the HUD.

Milla watched, surprised as the image of the city floating in front of her, translucent but clear enough to see. Wherever she looked, a blue circle seemed to follow and she quickly realized that it was somehow tracking her eyesight.

“Here…,” she said, looking at one of the hospital sites. “This is one of the places.”

Brinks downloaded the information. “All right. Thank you, Miss Chans. I’m redirecting our wounded there now.”

“It is… nothing, Major,” she told him. “It the least we owe you.”

“Just get to that bunker, Miss Chans. We need to coordinate with your leadership if we want to finish this off,” Brinks told her, shutting down the HUD backdoor, and returning her to normal operations.

Redirecting the wounded to the new site took only a couple commands; he summoned another ‘chute’ for himself.

There was no way, he was going to entrust his people to a place, he hadn’t checked out first, if he had any choice in the matter.

*****

“This cannot be good,” Lieutenant Savoy said after a long moment of silence.

“What is it, Boss?” Burke asked, coming up behind him, stumbling to a halt as he saw what Savoy was looking at. “Oh Shit.”

“Eloquent, Burke. Worthy of the bards,” Savoy said as he blew out a long breath, letting his armors air-conditioning catch the moist air and whisk it instantly away from the faceplate HUD.

“What the hell are you two blathering about?” Mehn asked as he stepped up, coming to a dead stop between the two of them and looking down.

A long way down.

The hole in the deck was about five meters in diameter and seemed to bore right through the hull of the landing craft and into the hard ground beneath them.

“I’m getting a depth reading… Jesus… Thirty meters… How’d they manage to dig that this fast?”

“Don’t know, Boss…, but it can’t be a good thing.”

“Yeah…,” Savoy shook his head. “All right, Burke, head back out and get one of the ‘chutes’ in here.”

“How come?” Burke objected. “The sensors on those things aren’t gonna be worth much, in that tight an area.”

“I know that…,” Savoy responded. “But my suit sensors will be. I’m going down there.”

*****

Eric Weston was sipping a steaming mug of coffee when the alert came in.

He dropped the mug unceremoniously into a recycling hatch, and turned to the even younger ensign who was taking Waters position. “What is it, Ensign?”

“Tachyon wakes, Sir,” she replied tensely, eyes darting across her board. “I… I think its several ships decelerating from FTL.”

“Put your readings up on the screen,” he ordered quickly.

The screen flickered, showing a computer enhancement of nicely animated blue particles being pushed ahead of something and breaking out and around, like the bow wave of a boat, pushing itself through a calm lake.

Only there were five of them.

“Oh my God,” someone whispered.

Weston ignored them.

At least now he knew what the last ship was waiting for.

And he’d been right too.

He didn’t like it.

Chapter 25

Lieutenant Savoy slowly twisted in a nonexistent breeze as he dropped down the five meter wide hole, the Cee Emm ‘chute’ lowering him slowly into the pit.

“Heat dissipation is roughly even,” he reported, looking down through the thermal overlay that decorated his suit’s HUD. “The walls are almost smooth, very regularly cut… But not glassy like a laser drill…”

His running commentary was being relayed up to his tech squad and from them, to the Major and the Odyssey, so he kept speaking for the record, as the walls continued to loom further and further above him.

“I’m approaching the bottom now…, slowing ‘chute’ deployment,” he said, slowly bringing himself to a stop just above the turn in the tunnel.

Savoy then inverted himself, hooking one leg up and around the cable that held him suspended in the air, and commanded the ‘chute’ to descend again. His head dipped below the curve of the tunnel a few seconds later and he stopped it again, watching through the thermal overlay down the tunnel, looking for any heat sources that might be the enemy drones.

“It’s quiet down here,” he said after a moment. “Nothing to indicate enemy activity.”

Other than the tunnel itself, of course,
he thought privately to himself without stating the obvious. After a long look, he made a choice, “All right guys, I’m cutting the tether.”

He unhooked his leg from the cable and snapped back upright as he triggered the release and dropped the remaining four meters to the ground. The sound of his landing echoed around him as he came down in a crouch, retrieving his rifle from where it was latched to the back of his armor.

In the passive night vision of his HUD, the tunnel appeared endless, vanishing off into eternity, with only minor thermal variations apparent throughout its length. Where he stood was cooling off, only a few degrees above the air temperature, which was running a relatively high thirty degrees Celsius.

Savoy took a few steps down the tunnel before coming to a decision, “I’m switching to active night vision now.”

A few motions brought up the options then he turned on the infrared spotlights built into the helmet and shoulders of his armor.

The HUD lit up bright green for a second it instantly darkened as its filters kicked in. Now he was looking at a tunnel, he estimated at about fifty meters long, with obvious branches moving off to either side at roughly ten meter intervals.

“Industrious little bastards,” he muttered as he moved forward slowly, one foot in front of the other, dry dirt and gravel crackling and crunching with each step, as he began to plumb the depths of the alien tunnel system.

*****

The three small flying devices approached the medical center together, something that might have prompted an attempt at defending the building, if the military command hadn’t placed a call through several minutes earlier to warn the guards of the approach.

So all they did was spread out slightly as the lead device swooped in and dropped off a hulking figure that carried a weapon, at least three times the size of their laser rifles. He, or it, walked directly to the closest guard, not showing any sign of caution or fear that they could see and spoke sharply.

“Is this the medical center?”

The guard nodded, blinking in surprise at the odd accent the man had. He’d never heard anything quite like it; it was almost like a total lack of accent, a flatness that he couldn’t place.

“Good,” the hulking figure said not moving, but somehow giving the impression that he was doing something.

The other two devices approached and the guards saw the limp figures dangling from them.

“Doctor!” The guard yelled over his shoulder, nodding at two of the others.

The other two guards stepped aside and three of the medical staff, rushed out with a hovering platform, sliding obediently along behind them. Immediately behind them were another three and another platform.

The guard turned back to the hulking figure and was surprised to see that the anonymous black faceplate was no longer in evidence. Instead, he could see the face behind it, lit up by a series of soft, red lights. The grim looking man actually looked a great deal more frightful than the impersonal black of the faceplate.

“Your people will need my help to open the armor,” he said, walking toward the medical teams.

The guard quickly signalled to three others and rushed along behind the hulking figure, as he reached the first medical team.

They were puzzling over how to treat a man, they couldn’t seem to get onto their platform, let along physically reach. The hulking figure just grabbed the limp figure, disconnecting the cable that supported him effortlessly, and slung him onto the platform.

“The suit has a subsurface breach in case of medical emergencies,” he told him in that curiously flat tone as he placed a finger alongside the prone man’s helmet.

They couldn’t see it, but Major brinks initiated a physical link to the suit, so that he could access a command set that wasn’t available over any wireless link for obvious reasons. Once the link was established, he ordered the suit to breach.

A hiss of escaping gas startled the team, causing many of them to jump back and the suit split along the center of the chest, down along the abdomen. It then slid open on hidden pneumatics as Brinks popped the helmet seal and pried the clamshell armor from Lieutenant Mackay’s head.

“You can treat him in the armor, or pull him out, if you have to,” Brinks told them brusquely, then turned and moved quickly over to where Jaime Curtis was still hanging, suspended above the ground by her cable connection to the ‘chute’.

The medical team stared after him for a second, before the lead doctor shook her head and snapped at them. A few seconds later, the platform was retreating into the facility with the three of them jogging alongside as they scanned and attached devices to their new patient.

*****

“If they continue their current deceleration,” Waters told his Captain, “they’ll rendezvous with the other ship in eight hours… If he accelerates to match course with them on a least time approach, we’ll be facing all six of them in about twelve, Sir.”

Weston nodded grimly, looking at the status board.

The Odyssey would have its forward armor repaired long before that, but its flight deck would still be breached, though the circuits for the traps should be repaired by then. That would put the Odyssey in near fighting trim, along with a full charge on her pulse torpedoes.

This, even under ideal circumstances, placed the Odyssey at the wrong side of long odds.

Eric shook his head, letting his PDA clatter to the console in front of him and looking over at Susan Lamont. “All right, what’s the status on the Archangels?”

“Not as bad as we’d feared, but they’re still down by four pilots. No fatalities, but three of the injured pilots have major radiation burns from cockpit hits from enemy lasers, and we have one man with a head injury. We think his Cee-Emm field collapsed when he ejected his cockpit,” Ensign Lamont said. “Counting Clarke that brings our total fighter compliment down by just over a third.”