The Terminal War: A Space Opera Novel (A Carson Mach Adventure) (23 page)

Tulula led Nigel back to the lasers.
 

Squid Three had already transferred Morgan’s information to the comms system. Babcock hit the transmit symbol on the arm of his chair. “Mach, can you hear me?”

“Babs? Is that you?”

“It’s me all right, old friend. Listen, things are heating up here. Are you three okay down there?”

Static interrupted by Babcock got the gist. It sounded like Mach had got himself into a kind of hell—again. “Listen, we’re about two hours away. You get yourself somewhere safe and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Stupid is what I do best, Babs, now get your asses in gear. Two hours might not be soon enough.”

With that, the line went dead, and Babcock turned his attention back to the ship’s controls. He felt useless at that moment, unable to do anything but wait until they arrived. He would remain calm and keep the crew focused. He didn’t need anyone getting overly excited and making some fool mistake.
 

“Keep her steady and keep her fast,” Babcock said. “We’ve got crew to save.”

He sat back and brooded over what was coming next and waited out each long minute of their journey to Terminus.
 

*

“Coming out of the L-jump,” Lassea said, but Babcock was already ahead of her, watching their trajectory tick down on the main screen ahead of him. Every nerve and muscle pulled taut as he messaged Mach a few times to ensure he was still alive. The sounds Babcock heard from somewhere beyond Mach’s position sent a chill through his bones.
 

The next stage was a blur to him. He brought up the view on the screen as the
Intrepid’s
engines defied the odds and brought them to Terminus ahead of the Axis fleet without blowing up along the way.
 

The small ice planet hung there in the middle of the dark space, it’s tiny, dying sun barely giving it any warmth. “Bring us down to the surface,” Babcock said.
 

Using a set of security protocols he had received from the vestan council, Babcock programmed a radio transmission to allow their safe passage through the planet’s outer security system.
 

The ship roared down toward the planet, the crew busy around their consoles, maintaining their rapid approach. “The entry’s going to be rough,” Tulula said, consulting her scanning results.
 

“So be it,” Babcock said.
 

And Tulula was right.
 

The entry sounded as if the Axis fleet had arrived and were bombarding them with cannons, yet the incredible engineering of the experimental vestan ship held together and even defied all attempts at stopping it.
 

They flew through the sky like the mythical Garuda, the wings of the
Intrepid
now coming in to slice through the atmosphere and bring them down to Mach’s coordinates.
 

“There it is,” Tulula said, her voice hushed. She stood for a moment just staring at the video screen, taking in the pinnacle of her species’ culture and technological wisdom. Nigel too stood transfixed.
 

Babcock, however, had no such reverie. He’d seen dozens of alien home worlds and for him they were all alike—a repository of times past, of lessons gone unlearned. For all the beauty of the Garden of Remembrance and the central building that held Mach hostage, there was the dark, swarming evidence of the vestans’ hubris: monsters.
 

“What the hell are they?” Lassea asked.
 

Their shapes resolved as the
Intrepid
came closer and eventually landed on a crest of a hill a quarter of a klick from Mach’s position.
 

The debris and squat, rectangular crypts made it impossible for them to get closer.
 

“They’re… us,” Tulula said, horror etched on her face. “Us before we were…”

She turned away and shared a look and an expression with Nigel that Babcock couldn’t begin to understand. The two of them slumped their shoulders and made a kind of whimpering noise.
 

For some reason, it annoyed Babcock. Sentimentality was not on the agenda right now. “Tulula,” he snapped. “I know this is difficult for you and Nigel, but right now there are your Saviors waiting to be saved. I want you to pilot the drone fighters and get Beringer and the Saviors’ shuttle into the cargo bay. Now.”

“Right away, Captain,” she said with no malice in her words.
 

“Lassea,” Babcock said, “I want you to keep the engines running. As soon as we’ve arranged an away party and got the drones in the air, I want you to hover fifty meters off the ground. We don’t want them things out there swarming all over us like fleas on a dead dog.”

“On it, Captain,” Lassea said, snapping a curt salute and turning back to her controls with eagerness.
 

Babcock then turned his attention to Sanchez, to tell him to stay put, that he hadn’t yet recovered from his recent medical attention, but he’d already gone. By the time Babcock had decided what to do, he had heard Sanchez’s voice booming over the ship’s communication channel.
 

“I’m going in,” Sanchez said. “Be ready to clear as soon as I’ve got Mach out.”

“Sanchez, you fool, you’ll get yourself killed!” Babcock replied, but it was too late, the old hunter was already off. Babcock turned to order Squid to keep a camera drone on him, but he realized that it too was gone.
 

He slapped his hand down on the side of the chair and struggled with the smart-screen controls to bring the video feed around to Sanchez’s position. As he did so, Tulula looked up and gasped.
 

There, standing on the ridge of a hill, was Sanchez armed with two twin-plasma chain guns mounted either side of him on an experimental combat exoskeleton. Squid hovered over the top of the hunter, no doubt providing targeting metrics.
 

“That fool’s gonna get himself killed!” Tulula said. “Nigel, you take over for me. Someone needs to go out there and help him.”

“No,” Babcock said… then, thinking about it and realizing that he had lost command and that it didn’t matter anymore, said, “Go, and be quick!”
 

The time wasn’t to argue anymore. The time was to act before that swarm of creatures destroyed everything the vestans knew and, worse, destroyed the few people Babcock considered friends in this fragile, painful existence.

With a war cry that was drowned out by the
Intrepid’s
engines, Sanchez engaged the exo-suit into high-speed combat mode. The motors aided his muscles weakened by months of prior surgery so that he felt like his old bad eighteen-year-old self again.

To his left lay the pyramid structure Mach and Adira were trapped within. To his right, and straight ahead, sweeping around in a swarming arc, were hundreds of proto-vestans, the enemy: the ones that would devour everything if they had a chance.

The old hunter checked his distance with the automatic rangefinder. A green reticule glowed on his HUD. He lifted the meter-long twin plasma chain guns and spun up the rotors. The swarm didn’t care; they continued to rush on, not knowing what was coming.
 

Sanchez grinned as the stim shot he’d taken earlier coursed through his veins and the adrenaline pumped his heart, slowed time, and brought him back his soldiering days, the days he loved the most. Fighting and hunting was what he was good at, not sitting inside a ship dealing with the white-collar assholes.
 

Here, now, fighting for life, that’s what he was about, and he had his friends to save.
 

Time to be me, he thought. He stepped forward with purpose, fear long gone, receding in the past as he channeled the fighter that lived within him, always waiting to be let out, to do what it did best.
 

“Sanchez!” Tulula screamed from somewhere behind him. He ignored her, making sure he stood between her and the onrushing swarm.
 

When the chain guns reached their optimal spin rate, Sanchez loped forward and let loose the chain fury of encapsulated, super-heated plasma. The rounds struck the icy ground in front of the swarm. Then as he got a few meters closer, the heavy weaponry hit the target, blasting on impact, covering dozens of creatures with each round.
 

A plume of purple plasma covered the battleground, mixed with the blue of the fields of ice to give the planet an even weirder atmosphere. Sanchez didn’t care, though. With Squid Three hovering above him, working on targeting, all he had to do was make sure he overwhelmed the enemy and got to the pyramids.
 

Tulula joined him by his side. She grabbed a rocket launcher from his back, hooked into Squid Three’s targeting protocol and laid down a carpet of micro bombs, carving a path through the swarm toward the pyramid.
 

Over in the distance, a huge explosion roared up, sending a million fragments of ice shattering into the sky.
 

“My God,” Sanchez said. “There’s more of them, look.”

Tulula stopped firing for a brief moment, taking in the scene. “I can’t comprehend all this,” she said.
 

“Then don’t. Just keep firing. We need to get Mach and the Saviors out of here.”

With that, he plunged forward, sending another twin volley of chain fire into a battalion of proto-vestans who were trying to flank him.
 

The rounds ripped into them, sending long, glossy black limbs flying around them, swathes of sod clumps and ice fragments bursting up in a cone of destruction. The protos screamed and scattered, yet they still came.
 

There must have been over three hundred now, Sanchez guessed. Split into three large sections, they seemed to be working together, spreading, diverting their fire. Tulula rained down more micro carpet bombs, crudely landscaping a path made of soil, rock, and bits of proto-vestans.
 

When his chain guns were out of ammo, he unclipped them from the sides of the exo-suit and withdrew his ion swords with integrated laser blasters in the hilt. He held both swords above his head and sprinted at a quick clip toward the leftmost clump of proto-vestans.
 

“Stay close,” he shouted to Tulula, who had now dropped the rocket launcher and was wielding an autolaser rifle. She picked off a few of the forerunning creatures as they headed toward the path of destruction leading to the pyramid.
 

They descended into a kind of long gulch. The proto-vestans were swarming over the sides, blocking them in front and behind. But Sanchez just grinned even further as he yelled out and dashed forward into contact with the first group of six black, lithe creatures.
 

The first one leaped at him.
 

He took it head-on, driving his ion sword right into the top of its head. With the other, he brought it down across the back of its neck, severing the head clean off. The next two didn’t leap this time but crouched and approached slowly.
 

Tulula fired off a three-shot burst, taking the first one down.
 

Sanchez fired the laser blaster with the right sword and then thrust forward with the left, driving it deep into one of the creature’s guts. Its long limbs struck Sanchez against the side of his armored helmet, rocking his head to the side.
 

The exo-suit took the impact and righted him. He brought the free sword around in an arc, slicing through two more creatures as Tulula spun and took down a few more with controlled auto blasts.
 

As they continued in this fashion through the gulch, getting ever closer to the pyramid, Squid Three chirped above them, flailing its eight limbs, firing its small onboard ordnance: micro nukes.
 

The sides of the gulch helped protect them from the wave pulse of the explosions even as the dirt and ice from the ground rained down on them.
 

Sanchez stepped over the pile of bodies and dashed forward. Tulula kept pace with him; horror etched on her face. “I can’t believe we’re doing this to Terminus,” she said.
 

“There’s no other alternative,” Sanchez replied. “Here, I’ll cover you; get inside.”

The first pyramid had a hole blasted through the wall. Once inside, Sanchez picked up the radio frequencies from Mach. Inside was dark, the power out, the plain, glossy walls and floor giving him no real indication of where to go. His and Tulula’s helmet lights flickered on, giving them all the light they needed.
 

Squid Three came chirping through above their heads. “Follow me,” it said to Sanchez, using text on his HUD. From behind them, a long scream roared out from the pulsing mass of proto-vestans descending on their location, but above them, Sanchez saw the two drone fighters from the
Intrepid
flying overhead like old-style jet fighters.
 

The two drones fired lasers and rockets, vibrating the pyramid with a series of explosions. “That you, Babcock?” Sanchez said, flipping over to the
Intrepid’s
open channel.

“Lassea, actually,” the young pilot said.
 

“Good shooting, girl,” Sanchez replied, proud of her for getting into the spirit. “You keep these fuckers off our backs, and we’ll get Mach. We’re inside now and will have him in a few minutes.”

“We’ll only be able to cover for a few more seconds,” Lassea said. “The drones are for getting the shuttle with Beringer and the Saviors; we’re bringing them into the hold.”

Sanchez shrugged his shoulders. “That’s fine, then; Mach and I will just have to do this the old-fashioned way. I’ll see you on the other side.”

With the drones creating time for them before the rest of the protos chased them down, Sanchez sped up, almost sprinting down the corridors. He followed Squid Three’s lead, swords outstretched, ready to attack anything that moved. And he would have plenty as he plunged deeper into the facility, heading for the central temple zone.