The Guardians of Sol (20 page)

I continued down the catwalk to another room, this one filled with beds and several
drugged, vivisected bodies. I felt sick and angry. This entire enterprise stank of a sick and twisted mind. I passed through this room as quickly as I could and came into an office complex. Here I finally did see a few people cowering under their desks. More importantly, the spiky-ridged figure of a Centurion passed through one of the doorways adjoining the room. He didn’t see me.

Centurions and AEU researchers working together, intriguing. I pointed my pistol at one of the cowering workers. “What were you doing here?”

“Research: bio-enhancements and genetic manipulation. We were just trying to help humankind reach their potential. We were given some starting points and raw data, and we went from there. Please don’t shoot us, we’re just the technicians.”

“I won’t shoot you unless you give me a reason. Stay where you are, I’m sure someone else will love to sort this entire travesty out,” then to IRIS, “Initiate a remote link and download as much data from these computers as you can before these idiots delete it.” I went after the Centurion.

And I found him waiting for me. “You will regret finding this facility, you filth. Now be good enough to die for me,” He told me in heavily accented standard. Vaguely reminded me of Russian mixed with some Scots-Irish, maybe a little Afrikaans.

He came at me with those strange recurve swords the bastards were so fond of. I unloaded my revolver into him, making a few dents, and cracking his visor. Unfortunately, his angled armor kept any of the shots from wholly connecting. I dove backwards, dodging his blow, and came up with my shield in my left hand, hammer in my right.

I charged him, shield first. He dodged, and we turned back to back before separating again. I blocked one of his swords with the haft of my hammer, and the other with my shield. I kicked out and he rolled backwards. We stared each other down for a minute. I clicked my jaw, activating the hammer, and then switched it to affect the same alloy of the swords I had picked up from the Centurion ship.

“Download complete,” IRIS informed me. “All available computer systems have been copied and indexed. Armor hard drive ninety-seven percent full. Recommend system purge at first convenience.”

Of course, as soon as I was distracted the centurion decided to attack me again. I caught most of his attacks on my shield, dodging whatever the shield missed. He was good, this mysterious man, but I had a lot more experience than I used to. In fact, I had two Table Knights since Greece to my credit.

I slammed my hammer into one of his swords, and it shattered just as I had hoped. I bent to one knee, and hooked my hammer behind his ankle and pulled. He fell and I whipped my hammer against his other sword. Disarmed, He put his empty hands up. Crap. He’d be a very valuable prisoner, of course, but I didn’t have anything to restrain him. If he’d forced me to kill him, everything would be so much simpler.

“IRIS, sampling spike,” and a spike came out of the bottom of my hammer. I knelt down on the Centurion and stabbed the spike into the thickest part of his chest armor. The spike sent out a rotating EM field to determine the alloy’s make up. It immediately came up as a match for the swords I had just shattered. This made me marginally happier.

The man started to struggle again, but I hit his chest with my hammer, and immediately his struggles weakened considerably as the armor shattered.

Something hit the back of my head and I practically flew off of my captive. I’d been a little too intent on the task at hand, even with a 360 degree wrap around view I didn’t see my assailant. Of course, lying stunned face down, I did finally take a look, and unsurprisingly, it was another Centurion. The surprising thing was that he hadn’t killed me.

“Stop messing around, we’re going to be swamped with Guardians soon, we have to get out of here, get back to the fleet,” The new one told my now former captive as he helped him up. “Come, we must get out the back door.”

And then they were gone. I stood up slowly, my head pounding, and gathered up my weapons. There was no sign of the Centurions, and as I made my way back to the elevator shaft, I noticed that the cowering technicians were now a bunch of quite dead technicians. That was too bad; they could have given us some good information. The people in the tanks were untouched though. I think there was a good chance that our original contact Finney was somewhere in there.

I jet jumped back up the shaft, and followed the schematics and trail of bodies to the control tower, where Filch was patched into the computer system. I arrived just in time to see several of the anti-air turrets turn to the north east and begin firing at AEU shuttles arriving with enemy reinforcements.

“Has anybody called
our
side for reinforcements yet?” I asked.

“Why would we do dat, mon? We be winnin!” Voodoo replied. I sighed.

I looked out one of the windows and noticed First Squad and my boys getting pounded by some auto-guns on the perimeter. “I guess someone forgot to tell the guys outside, Voodoo. Spicy, get on the horn and tell Joshua to activate the beacon. As soon as the first shuttle touches down we can consider this mission accomplished.”

*****

John was still up on the ridge with his team picking off errant soldiers. Except for the auto-guns, nothing in the area had proper protection against plasma weapons. He still couldn’t think of anything to take those damn things down though, and Filch said they were operating on an independent system.

In the sky to the west, he could see streaks of fire from the combat shuttles beginning their descent. Crap. They had maybe ten minutes to destroy or disable those turrets before the rank and file came and started getting slaughtered.

It seemed that Captain Joshua had the same thought, because he set his squad into pairs to take on most of the turrets. First Squad’s superior speed and maneuverability made them uniquely suited to the task, even if each turret had multiple barrels and overlapping fields of fire. Their rockets and Gatling rounds had no effect on the mag shields, but after a minute the Fuzzy Bunnies proved that their heat sabers were perfectly effective. It was a matter of moments before only a few turrets were still standing, and Haywire’s team took care of them with their hammers.

John took a deep breath, and started walking down the ridge as the first shuttles landed and began disgorging their troops. King Pendragon would most likely recall all extant forces to London. The Sentinel would send more men to all of the staging points they had won over the last few weeks. The final battle was going to happen in a day or two. Then hopefully things could get back to normal for awhile.

November 17, 2289.
London Underground

In an intersection where ancient catacombs met modern subway lines, Christoph could hear gunfire. He just couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from. The London underground was a confused mess of tunnels, old and new. He doubted even a Minotaur of legend could navigate from one end of the city to the other in a timely manner.

For Christoph, even with an up-to-date AI and echo amplification analytics software, he couldn’t make heads or tails of the data. When Telamon and Eric had sent him down here with a couple squads of Venators yesterday, it seemed like an easy enough task. Just find a backdoor into the palace. They had made good headway, mapping out over half of the city’s underground within a few hours, but as soon as they had crossed under the Thames, they finally met stiff resistance. Say what you will about Uther, but he isn’t a complete idiot.

He finally got a ping on his map. Not wasting any time, he pulled his team in and followed the marker to where a squad of Venators where hunkered down at a choke point. It would have been nice to have his full squad, but they were too spread out in the catacombs. Christoph poked his head around the corner. The soldiers there didn’t seem to be particularly alert, but he could see a variety of automated sensors that could set of all manner of alarms.

Fog grenades would cloak his team’s approach, but alert the soldiers. The tunnels ahead had a fairly small radius, only two or three meters. Their ammo load out might not be able to pierce the adamantine layers of his armor, but it could damage the active camo emitters… Active camouflage would probably be the best approach, but certain motion detectors were sensitive enough to see through the illusion.

Christoph patched into the communications of the Venator squad. “My team is going to move in and neutralize the choke point,” He linked his tactical read out to their captain. “I need your best shots to take out these sensors on my mark, quietest weapons possible.”

“Acknowledged,” The Captain replied. Christoph switched back to his team.

“Get to the back wall, on my mark neutralize your designated targets quietly,” He did a quick count of the soldiers. “Idie, prioritize and designate targets, give me the extra then relay to the team,” He tasked his customized suit AI.

He moved into position next to Seer and Augur. All of the soldiers were outlined on his HUD, but his three targets were the only ones highlighted. Gunfire echoed through the tunnels again, and the soldiers began double checking their weapons. A better chance wouldn’t come along anytime soon.

“Mark.”

The four Shadowstealers pushed off against the sewer wall with all of the force that their armor could muster, and supplemented that force with a healthy boost from their backpack thrusters. Simultaneously, the Venators at the corner of the intersection fired off their rifles, disabling the motion sensors, but alerting the guards.

By the time the guards were bringing their weapons up, a few sliding magazines back into their rifles, Christoph’s team was already in their midst. There were fourteen guards, and more than half of them fell in the first few seconds. Idie fired off three shots from Christoph’s back mounted gauss cannon, and he finished of the other two with the big blade on his forearm.

His weapons snapped back into place. “Relay to the squads still on the other side, we have a hole in their defensive line.” He told the highest ranking Venator. “Make sure the rest of my squad knows as well. I want them to rendezvous with me ASAP.”

*****

Twenty minutes later, all twelve members of Shadowstealer squad were making their way through comparatively unoccupied subways. Oh, sure they had to dispatch the occasional messenger or squad of soldiers, but they made much better progress than they had in days. That was until they hit a blockade about a quarter mile from Buckingham palace, rebuilt now as a fortified castle called Camulodunum. Whoever Uther’s great grandfather had really been, he’d certainly been pretentious enough, displacing the hereditary royal family, parliament, and rebuilding their homes from the ground up.

“Witness, Druid; find me a way around.” Christoph told his officers needlessly. They were already examining the tunnel or backtracking towards the subway stop before the one with the blockade.

“Boss,” Rodriguez, Witness, called in. “Preacher and Parson think they have something back at the last stop. It could be good or it could be a waste, but it’s more hope than we have blasting through that barricade.”

“On my way,” Christoph replied, waving his team to follow.

“Parson was popping his head up to see how things are up top, and on his way back down his echo amp picked up a weird resonance coming from the wall behind the vending machine that Deacon is ripping apart for snacks. We’re thinking that it’s an entrance to… something. If we’re lucky then it’ll be a way into a lower set of tunnels, something we can use to keep going around. But first we just have to find a way to open the door.”

Inside his helmet, Christoph smiled slyly. “Prophet, kindly open that door.”

“You sure that’s wise, sir? Prophet isn’t exactly known for his subtlety.”

“He’ll be ok. I’m almost certain of it.” Christoph replied. “Prophet, make sure you keep the noise down, we don’t need the entire garrison from that barricade coming down on us.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be doin’ what I’ll be doin. Don’tcha worry ‘bout me, sir.” Prophet replied, wringing a sigh from his captain.

Everyone except for Prophet moved back to the rails and took cover while he started outlining the door with his charges. They could hear him humming happily over the comlink. Quickly and confidently, he laid out some explosive tape, covered that with baffling foam to muffle the explosion, and pricked that with a detonator.

“All ready here, Cap’n!” Prophet called.

“Then blow it! We need to get back on the move.”

Prophet shrugged, and hit the trigger. A muffled “whump” and a little mortar dust the only evidence of his work before the door fell in towards a hidden elevator shaft. The blown door came to a rest against the closed entrance of the elevator car.

“Uther sure likes his secret underground facilities, doesn’t he?” Christoph remarked. In addition to the research base in Ireland, at least five other similar sites had been discovered through the course of the war. “Might as well see what this one is up to.”

“Boss, I think I just found the control panel for that door…” Seer said, pointing to the electronic pad hidden behind a cleverly camouflaged panel.

“Does it control the elevator too?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Oh, I think this button opens its doors though.”

“Then push it. Prophet, clear that door. I’m getting impatient.”

The inside of the elevator was actually quite spacious, probably built to move freight. Christoph figured he could fit about half of his squad in at a time. He pulled his team in with him, along with half of team 2.

*****

The walls of the facility were stark white, a harsh antiseptic smell made its way through the filters in the Shadowstealers’ helmets. Echo amplification mapped several more corridors and even more large rooms ahead of them.

“This is kind of creepy,” Augur said. “Not a fraggin soul in sight…”

“Keep your eyes open, people. We need to find the purpose of the facility, but more importantly, we need to find that entrance into the castle.”

Just then, a mousy man in a white lab coat came up behind them, “Excuse me, pardon me, coming through. Important things to do you know.”

In the crowded hallway, most of the men did their best to give the strange little man room. Prophet, however, turned a little too fast to see what was going on, and sent the man flying into a wall. There was a snap and the man landed with his neck at an awkward angle.

“Oh crap…” he muttered.

“Damn it, Prophet! We could have used him! You can set a micron trigger in the dark, but you can’t notice a grown man standing right next to you?!” Christoph took a calming breath, “Someone search him for ID, passcards, anything we might need to use. Prophet, you have the rear, and if you kill another unarmed civilian without orders, then so help me, I will shove my foot so far up your ass you’ll taste metal for weeks.”

His body language showed Prophet to be properly cowed, but Christoph wasn’t satisfied. Scowling, he led them further down the hallway, trying to find a map, directory… really anything to point the way.

“Oh, sweet!” Lieutenant Rohjaz exclaimed.

“What did you find?” Christoph asked.

“Candy bar,” came the happy reply.

Christoph groaned inwardly, but Oracle found the dead man’s wallet; filled with I.D. and passcards. Rohjaz slipped the candy bar into a hidden compartment in his thigh armor that should have held extra ammunition for the officer’s arm cannon.

The corridor had no distinguishing features down its 100 meter length, except that it ended with a door and another intersecting passage. Once they reached that point, a glance down either direction showed corridors as equally unremarkable as the first one curving away towards what could be assumed to be more of the main facility.

His patience was wearing thin after so many days fighting underground, but Christoph still made sure that his active camouflage was working before opening the door. In power armor, the maneuver was not gentle at all and the door crunched off of its hinges. Fortunately, there was nothing to greet them on the other side except for machinery whirring away; constructing what appeared to be armor components. Christoph surveyed the enormous cavern. He turned to his tech experts.

“Deacon, Seer, is this place what it looks like?”

“You mean some kind of manufacturing facility for very advanced armor parts? Then I would have to say… probably?” Deacon replied.

Seer, meanwhile, was looking closely at some of the components actually being built. “These parts are more advanced than anything we knew the UEA possessed, but the configurations don’t match anything conforming to any piloted armor I’ve ever seen.” He held up something resembling a leg off of the assembly track. “If anything, I would have to say that they’re manufacturing automata here. And at least several generations more advanced than the old stock models the Spartans saw in
Greece.”

“Damn. Automata, human experimentation, biological weapons… Is there anything on the glo
bal ban list that Uther hasn’t decided to get into?” Christoph asked rhetorically. “Flag this facility in the log. A team will have to take care of this after the battle.”

Christoph directed his gaze to the far end of the extremely large room. At medium magnification he could make out stairs and the doorway that they led to. He started making his way to that exit. His men spread out as they went. Cleric picked up a new power cell that looked like it could fit the plasma cannon which he had picked up on Pluto, and was now integrated into his armor. Augur and Reverend snagged very strange very smooth looking rifles that had the same type of power cell that Cleric picked up in place of ammunition clips.

When they finally reached the stairs (the chamber must have been a half of a kilometer long), it was clear that Seer was right about the automata, as robots complete with the strange smooth rifles were moved through a small hole in the wall under the stairway.

The door at the top of the stairs led to an extensive series of catwalks overlooking company after company of automata standing at attention. People in white lab coats, as well as the occasional armored figure, walked around inspecting the robots. No one was on the catwalks, but there was a raised box with a large window set against the nearest wall perpendicular to where the squad had entered. The box looked like it could be some sort of control center, or maybe just an overseer’s office. Either way, the Shadowstealers made their way to it, finding the door electronically locked.

“Why don’t we just bust it down?” Prophet asked.

“Because that might set off an alarm, you miniscule brained ape!” Seer hissed, just as annoyed as his captain of the demolition expert’s recent stupidity. He gestured to the hundreds, perhaps thousands of automata on the floor below them. “Do you really want to draw the attention of everything down there?”

“Oh… I guess not,” Prophet replied thoughtfully.

“Oracle, hand me that passcard we snagged earlier,” Christoph ordered. He slipped it into the reader on the lock, which turned green after a second. Cracking the door open and getting an image of it, he saw how small it was inside. “LT, Sarge, take your teams and find a way into the palace. There should be a way with a facility this extensive.”

Signaling affirmative for his order, the eight men spread out over the catwalks. Christoph walked in to the control room – for given the equipment inside, it obviously was – and pointed to a man taking a nap on a couch in the back.

“Someone get him restrained. Prophet, don’t touch anything.”

Christoph studied the displays, but while he was very well versed in armor mechanics he couldn’t make heads or tails of the information. After getting the sleeping man taken care of, Seer took a look himself.

“Well that’s interesting…”

“What is?”

“I have no idea what these displays are supposed to tell us. That isn’t standard tech language; it isn’t any standard language that I know. Like I said: interesting.”