Into the Black: Odyssey One (36 page)

*****

“Sorry ‘bout this, Jaime,” Bermont muttered quietly as he hooked the wounded soldier’s arm and unceremoniously flipped her over.

Normally he’d be worried about aggravating her injuries, but in this case, two things kept that from being a primary concern. First was the fact that the suit automatically held her immobile, while unconscious from injury, for just this reason. Second was the fact that he could hear the rapid crack of the Scram-jet rounds, fired from Russell’s MX-112, as they went supersonic.

Which meant that they were about to have company!

He yanked the wire down from the ‘chute’ and slapped the clip onto the metal eye-bolt that was located just between the shoulder blades of Curtis’ suit and tapped an order into the chute’s program.

The Cee-Emm powered device lifted off the building, drawing him and Curtis up with it, then smoothly glided back to where the sole remaining local militia-woman was still taking cover.

“Alrighty!” Bermont smiled at her, though she couldn’t see it under the flat black face plate, “It’s your turn now.”

“Who ARE you people?” She finally ventured, surprising Bermont.

“We’re here to help.” he told her. “Now come on… arms up…”

She obeyed, her right fist still locked tightly around the handle of the weapon she’d carried. Bermont clipped the line, then paused and glanced at the rifle style weapon. “Hey. What does that thing fire?”

“What?”

He tapped the weapon, “this. What does it shoot?”

She looked at it and shrugged. “It is a laser.”

“Laser, huh?” He plucked it out of her hand, despite her attempt to hang onto it.

“Hey!”

“Relax, Lady,” he muttered, flipping the rifle over in his hands. “Let’s see. Control panel… can’t read that shit… red light that probably means it’s hot. Let me guess, this must be the…”

The weapon hummed in his hand and a sharp crack and sizzling sound made him jump. He dropped the weapon in surprise while looking over at the section of wall he’d just melted down.

“Whoa holy shit,” He whispered. “That’s impressive.”

*****

People screamed when Milla stepped through the mangled doors she had bent and ripped open like paper. She really couldn’t blame them. She knew from first hand, how frightening it was to see a faceless figure, especially one that had just mangled a pair of security doors with its ‘bare’ hands.

Not that they were all that strong, she had to admit. Strong enough for civilian use, but certainly not constructed out of anything that resembled actual armor. And since they were inside, they weren’t designed to withstand the elements either.

Just ordinary, average people who weren’t using strength augmenting alien armor.

Ironically they’d probably have been less afraid if she’d used a laser to cut her way in.

Milla Chans took a moment to examine the area and noted that there were several people with palm lasers, pointing them shakily at her. She held up her hands slowly and made it a point to not make any sudden motions.

“I am Ithan Chans,” she told them. “Colonial Navy.”

The palm lasers stayed pointed at her, but the shaking subsided a little, so she breathed a little easier. Palm lasers were intended more for survival than anything else. They start fires, heat rocks, cut things, those sorts of utilities. However, they were powerful enough to injure a person, even fatally in extreme cases and she had no desire to put the alien armor to a serious test.

There was, of course, absolutely no reason for any of these people to actually own them, but Milla found that people in the cities tended to do strange things, for no apparent reason. She doubted any of them had ever actually
used
the small devices, however, it didn’t stop them from acquiring them.

She wouldn’t mind really, if they would acquire a training course at the same time. Unfortunately, most people who wished to own such things really had no idea what they would do with them, should they actually acquire them.

So after they had calmed down some more, Milla reached back and pulled the tabs that broke her suit’s seal, and slowly pulled the faceless helmet off and looked around. “I require a communications terminal.”

*****

Fleet Admiral Rael Tanner was still trying to scrounge up any available assets to step between the sole remaining Drasin Cruiser and, if necessary, the alien ship that had taken to hunting the Drasin, for no discernable reasons.

He’d left the command of the ground units in the hands of his alternate in the Colonial Army, but judging from the constant flow of contraband language flowing from the adjacent communications pit, Commandant Nero Jehan wasn’t having much more luck than he was.

Tanner sighed, taking care to do so extremely quietly and wiped his brow, as he crossed the short distance to his peer and laid a hand on the roughly built man’s shoulder.

Jehan was from one of the outer colonies, one that had so far only been populated for a few centuries and had grown up in real wilderness, not in the carefully monitored and tamed preserves, that still existed here on Ranquil. That was undoubtedly one of the reasons the man had chosen a military career in the first place and certainly led him to his vocation in the ground forces.

It also made him a little rougher than most people from the Five Colonies were willing to tolerate.

“Calmly, Nero,” Tanner said as the mountain of a man half jumped and spun on him.

Tanner stood a full head and a half shorter than his army counterpart, but he didn’t flinch as the big man turned and it was the bigger man that backed down first.

“Apologies, Rael,” Nero Jehan mumbled, shaking his head.

“No need,” Tanner assured him. “However, do check your language; it makes my naval personnel nervous.”

The big ogre of a man smiled ruefully and nodded, rubbing the back of his head in slight chagrin. The ultra-civilized culture that his diminutive friend came from was hard for him to work his way around in easily, as he’d grown up in a community of less than one million people that had been spread over several hundred square kilometers of rugged forest and brush land.

Here on Ranquil, with over five billion people living within only a few square kilometers, he had found that there were few people indeed that wanted to be around him.

Rael Tanner had been one of those few.

“Apologies again,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder.

“How’s it going?” Tanner asked, nodding in the direction of Jehan’s staff.

Jehan grunted a sound that communicated more annoyance and disgust than all the illegal curses Tanner had ever heard, “I’ve lost three brigades so far. Enemy losses are negligible.”

Tanner frowned.

It didn’t make
sense
, damn it!

The weapons they carried, the ship board tools of destruction, they were more powerful than some suns! One Laser rifle could render a small mountain to molten slag in short order, its beam able to radiate focused energy that was on par with the surface of a small star. The shipboard weapons were even more powerful.

The Drasin shouldn’t be able to stand up to that. No ONE should be.

“Have your people seen any of the objects that fell from that alien shuttle?” Tanner asked.

“Soldiers. Not objects.” Jehan corrected.

Tanner hadn’t heard that. He looked up sharply, “Oh?”

“Heavy armor. Loud weapons.” Jehan told him in that clipped way of his. “
Their
weapons kill Drasin.”

Tanner blinked.

Well at least something was killing Drasin.

All he had to do was figure out whom, what, and of course, why. Then maybe he might be able to save his world.

Tanner was about to reply, when one of his aides came running up.

“Admiral, Sir… We have a call for you.”

“I don’t have time for…,” Tanner started to say.

“It’s from Ithan Chans… Assigned to the Carlache.”

Tanner froze.

He turned slowly, eyes falling on the flushed aide, “that is not possible.”

“Her identification has been verified, Sir.”

“Show me.”

*****

“Listen to me carefully, Lieutenant,” Major Brinks growled. “I don’t care if that laser can play the star spangled banner. I read over thirty of the damned ET spider things coming your way now and I want you and the rest of your team out of there. Now.”

Lieutenant Bermont didn’t look happy over the order, but he acknowledged it.

“All right, I’m sending in two more ‘chutes’ to pick you up,” The Major told him, waving off a reply. “I’d suggest you don’t miss them.”

“Yes Sir,” Bermont said over the network. “Understood.”

“You’d better,” Brinks growled, wiping the channel clear with a finger flick and an eye blink.

He was watching two full-fledged firefights, one cautious approach, and at the same time was eavesdropping on Milla, while she talked to her boss. Of the four, he was firmly convinced that it was the conversation that would prove to be the most important, but he had an artillery barrage to direct.

“Sniper teams, prepare to direct a mortar barrage to Lieutenant Bermont’s position.” He ordered softly, “Thermobaric munitions are cleared for use.”

*****

“Russell!” Bermont yelled, though he didn’t have to, “Pack your shit, boy! We are LEAVING!”

Corporal Russell glanced back, nodded once and emptied the rest of his clip into the approaching wave that was slowly clambering up slick smooth sides of the pyramidal structure’s tube-like pylons.

There were more and more of them now, as if they were attracted to anything that could kill one of their numbers.

Bermont wasn’t sure if they had a tactical network of their own and were deployed to cover the hottest spots, or… something else, but the net effect was the same. The soldier drones were converging on his and Russell’s location and with each one, either of them took down, several more appeared out of the woodwork.

So to speak, of course, seeing as how Bermont had yet to actually see any wood.

He emptied his own clip, the heavy scramjet rounds blasting from the muzzle of his rifle, accelerated by the rail gun to lethal speeds even before the scramjet engines ignited. He felt a warble through his suit as the weapon went dry, then a flicker of motion from above caught his attention.

He hit the clip ejector with a smooth motion, rising from his kneeling position as he saw Russell do the same. The fresh clip slapped into the rifle even as he looked up to see the Cee-Emm ‘chute’ swoop down over his position.

In a practiced maneuver, Bermont grabbed the ‘chute’s’ handle in his left hand as it flew past, letting the familiar sensation of giddy weightlessness pass over him as it enveloped him in its field, then the building under him dropped away as he was pulled into the air.

A few meters away, Russell was already airborne and whooping out some mad war cry as he sprayed fire back in the direction he had just come from.

Bermont watched as the creatures converged on the top of the pyramid-shaped city, milling around in apparent confusion as their intended targets were no longer waiting there for them. There were some halfhearted attempts to find them, he noted, but they didn’t seem to be looking UP.

Bermont wondered briefly how long that would last.

Long enough, he hoped.

*****

“Mortar unit… hold fire,” the Major ordered, watching the scene on the top of the immense pyramid over a kilometer away.

He could see the drone things still arriving, even as the ones already there milled around as if lost. It was better then he’d hoped, and the former Marine Major couldn’t resist taking advantage of it.

He flashed back to the information they had on these things, thinking about what they had done to the first planet the Odyssey had seen them on. How they had begun taking it apart, piece by piece.

How they had apparently increased their population.

Doubling every three days.

He knew that they had to be destroyed. Not merely defeated, that wasn’t enough. Every single one of them that had landed on this world had to be wiped out in detail, without exception. He didn’t know how they bred, and thus couldn’t take a chance that one of them might, just might, be able to replenish their numbers in only a few weeks.

So, finally, as the arrival of new drones began to peter out, and he saw some of those already there start to look antsy, about leaving, Major Brinks opened his mouth to give the order.

Chapter 23

Archangel Lead slid to a controlled stop only a few meters from the rear bulkhead, its reverse jets flaring brightly, as Stephanus stepped on them in order to kill his inertia. Without the dedicated fighter ‘traps’ used on the lower deck, landing the Archangels on the Odyssey required a great deal more skill the normal.

Even so, he stopped with a comfortable, though narrow, window and leaned his helmeted head back against the seat as one of the trundling loaders made its way out to him.

The entire flight operations staff was scuttling over the deck in their hard suits, working feverishly through the vacuum of the flight deck, and he could see that the large equipment elevators were moving nonstop as they transported men and equipment to the lower deck.

The fighter rocked then, drawing Steph’s attention, as the loader backed into the blunt nose of his fighter and locked into place. Then, with the steady gait of the indefatigable machine, the fighter and its pilot were turned around and guided straight to one of the immense airlocks that served to transport shuttles to the repair bays above them.

He had to wait for three other Archangels to make the run and watched as they were slowly moved into place beside him, itching to be out of his cockpit now that he was back aboard the Odyssey. He forced himself to wait, though, until the four fighters were in place, and the big airlock/lift rumbled steadily upwards.

From that point, it was only minutes to where his fighter was locked down, his cockpit pressure equalized, and Stephanus was popping the seal. He crawled out of the tightly fitted bolster seat and accepted a hand from one of the flight crew as they in turn crawled all over his plane with their tools and scanners.