The Expansion Box Set, page 29
part #1 of The Expansion Series
Its target.
“Human people,” a metallic growl announced startling them all, “should not come to this place.”
They all froze, trying to fathom how their language was being spoken by these beasts unknown to them an hour before.
“Human people,” a slightly higher-pitched metallic growl said, “go now, and forget Kuldar hiding. We kill them now.”
Brandt paused briefly before answering. “We can’t do that.”
The larger Va’alen roared a deafening challenge, rising up to its terrifying full height and swinging the fat gun up into a four-handed firing pose. Nothing they had ever seen before made the same noise or fired the same way. A flash of orange light seared from the barrel and launched a bolt of energy across the clearing aimed directly at the exposed ground commander.
A dozen things happened at once. Specter, his superhuman reflexes already propelling him toward Brandt before she had even fully registered what was happening, slammed into her as he simultaneously activated his personal shield generator.
The bolt of energy hit him and dissipated against his protective shield. In doing so, it transferred the energy kinetically to send both of them flying away at a hard angle. They hit the trees, flying through the first layer of dense, black foliage and snapping off branches as they tumbled to the ground, digging furrows in the soft moss.
“Are you okay?” Specter asked, scanning her suit for signs of damage.
“Cosmetic,” she said as her HUD reported no major system malfunctions. “Go.”
The sounds of gunfire had already begun in the clearing.
Zero ran a fast lap around the Tanto to pop up on the other side of the small craft and bring his rifle to bear. He knew what a dozen well-placed rounds could do with the new, fully charged rifle in skilled hands—his were definitely skilled. He couldn’t acquire the first one, the one that had fired and done who-knew-what damage to his teammates. The other, however, was still taking cover behind the landing strut of its ship and it showed its entire exposed left flank to Zero and his weapon.
“Smile, asshole,” he muttered. They were humanoid in appearance, he reminded himself. They walked upright on two legs despite the extra set of arms; there would have to be a nervous system running from the main control center to the extremities. That control center would certainly be the head. He pulled the trigger with the target reticule hovering over the base of the creature’s head.
Three rounds left the barrel of his gun, all heavy caliber and all supercharged by the singularity device seated ahead of the trigger guard.
Instantly, three corresponding bullet holes blossomed in the creature’s thick shell-like hide which, had it been human, would have removed the entire upper section of its spinal column.
It stopped firing, spinning to acquire him in a heartbeat as it switched the bulbous gun from its right hand claws to the two left ones.
Four arms and ambidextrous? Zero thought. Not fair!
He threw himself out of the line of sight, yelling into the comm for Rogers to raise the shields on the Tanto to full. He hit the button just in time as two, three, four rapid bolts of orange energy projectiles seared the dull, red light of their battle ground and rocked the small ship on its landing struts. Trapped inside the shield bubble, and temporarily safe, Zero watched in horror as the thing ran low at him and slammed its body into the shield. It bounced back, struck an animalistic pose of intimidation, and let out a roar that he could hear over the gunfight. As it turned, full of impotent rage, he saw the three clear holes his gun had made beginning to close up.
“Center mass,” he called into the comm as he stared in horror. “Aim for center mass.”
Marcus rose from his position of cover and emptied a full magazine into the right side of the creature.
Fight with what you have, he reminded himself. What he had was a kickass new carbine that fired the god of all known armor-piercing rounds. The problem, unfortunately, was that their technology was dominant only in their world, and they weren’t in their world any longer.
The gun clicked dry and he fumbled for a replacement magazine to fit. It may be kickass, but his muscle-memory was not yet attuned to the new weapon. Raising his eyes again, Marcus saw that his last seventy rounds, almost all of them on target, had gained the unwelcome and undivided attention of the huge beetle-like thing headed straight for him. Racking back the charging handle, he aimed and emptied the second magazine into the advancing alien.
Chopra, not hitting her target with as many rounds either, watched the beast change direction and head directly at Marcus. She raised herself to one knee and added her fire to his, hoping to bring it down together like a pair of big game hunters. Behind her, spurred into a mad dash of bravery or stupidity, came Byrne from behind their ship.
He was running, closing the distance between him and the creature to enhance the effects of concentrated small arms fire. Three paces before he reached it, foolishly yelling a battle cry in rage and fear, the thing turned and backhanded him with both left hands. Byrne was knocked back down to the soft ground with a thud. Deep scratches had been scored across the chest of his armor with the curved claws of both hands. The creature continued to soak up intense fire from two fronts, but this nearest threat had angered it. It reached down, grabbing Byrne’s left leg in one powerful claw, and swung him by the ankle to smash his body into Marcus’s. The huge man was knocked down and the gun shattered in his hands.
With one fewer attacker to defend against, it turned to acquire the next target. As it cocked back an arm to launch the limp, metal body it held, a new wave of incoming rounds battered its thick carapace.
Zero called for the shields on the Tanto to drop and allow him to re-join the fight. Emerging from the edge of the trees, Specter drilled bullet after supercharged bullet into the shoulder of the alien arm holding their comrade. His shots were accurate beyond normal human ability; the concentration of fire was so acute that the limb suffered enough damage to compel it to drop the man. The arm hung limply beside the armored carapace of its huge, insect-like body. It dropped Byrne, turned to face the new onslaught and raised the gun with its still undamaged arms. The gun fired, and Specter threw himself to the side for the shot to pass him harmlessly by. He leapt through the air, slamming both feet onto the damaged shoulder of the thing and severing the destroyed limb. He drew his weapons and fired relentlessly in the hope that he could drill a hole through the hard, armored skin of the beast.
The shot from the alien rifle that had missed Specter found another mark by pure, random, terrible chance. Brandt had risen with difficulty, resetting some of her suit’s systems after the massive impact had jarred her. Just as she reached running speed and entered the clearing again she was thrown down hard, spinning to her right in a wild movement she couldn’t arrest, until she came to a stop hard against a wide, soft tree trunk.
Ahead of her she could see Chopra and Zero engaging the creature farthest away, could see its body rocking and rippling with the impacts of bullets. Even under such an attack, it seemed to feel no pain. She saw Specter standing on the downed body of the other one, the muzzle of his carbine alive with flame as he fired relentlessly at point blank range. He reached for a replacement magazine as his gun stopped firing.
Brandt couldn’t move. Couldn’t raise her own weapon to aid any of her team. The servos of her suit had been scrambled by the energy blast and her physical strength wasn’t enough to force the unpowered suit to articulate. All she had was the menu system, and she tried the last thing she could to save them all.
35
Near Proxima Centauri
“Contact, eighteen thousand kilometers,” shouted the tactical officer on the bridge of the Ichi.
“Talk to me,” Torres said.
“Sir, they’re squawking UN ident codes. It’s the Hammer from the colony fleet.”
Torres relaxed at this news. His heart had dropped through his guts at the prospect of this new ship being more of the hostile aliens that his friends were battling on the surface.
“Second contact, twelve thousand clicks. It’s the Venture, Captain.”
“Call ‘em up,” Torres said as he took his seat again. “Put it on screen.”
“Jump complete, Admiral. The Hammer is here… and so is another ship. It’s the recon ship, sir, the Bōken sha.”
“The Ichi,” Dassiova corrected him.
“They’re hailing us.”
“On screen,” Dassiova said, taking his seat as the strong, good-looking features of a youthful man appeared on the wall.
“Sir,” Torres said hurriedly, “no time to explain fully, but I need your ships to adopt defensive positions around the planet we’re orbiting. I have a ground team in contact with hostile alien forces.”
“Understood, Captain. Helm, bring us into orbit and deploy weapons systems,” Dassiova said as he hit the ship-wide comm channel to activate it. “All hands, battle stations. Battle stations.” He turned to the comm officer and gave his orders. “Signal the Hammer. My compliments to Captain Hayes; he is to push out a perimeter and protect the ships in orbit. And I want our ground teams on standby ready to deploy as soon as we’re in position.”
The admiral sat back, adrenaline coursing through his veins as he wished for nothing more than to pick up a rifle and mix it with whoever—whatever—threatened his people.
“Sir, we have multiple contacts,” shouted the excitable tactical officer.
“Understood. On screen,” Captain Hayes told her, biting down the urge to shush her. The viewscreen came to life, showing nothing but the empty blackness of space tinged a dull red on one side. “I don’t see anything, tactical.” Professional annoyance sharpened his words.
“I don’t understand, Captain,” she said as she tapped furiously at the screen. “These coordinates are exactly where the contacts registered.”
“Wait,” called out the helmsman from his pilot position below the big display. “Light distortion… there. You see it?”
“Okay people,” Captain Hayes said as he stood and paced his bridge. As he walked, he stroked the small goatee he had grown to cover the scar earned in one of his many clashes with terrorist factions on Earth. “We are facing off against hostile alien forces utilizing some kind of distortion or”—he shuddered at the use of the word —“cloaking technology. Tac? Give them a burst of fire directly across the path of the lead contact, see if that doesn’t change their minds.”
The massive pair of chain guns whirred to life and chattered their destructive noise to the coordinates where the cloaked ship would be. They watched on screen as the luminous tracer rounds—irradiated to shine bright green, like glow sticks—rippled into the distortion magnified on the display.
A collective gasp went around the bridge. Only Hayes stayed silent, despite his brain screaming at him from behind his mask of cool command. The rippling image flickered, unveiling whatever distortion field had masked their visual signature. It revealed not one contact but four. As one, they turned towards the Hammer and opened fire with searing bolts of orange energy. Discovering three other contacts meant that Hayes’s frigate was facing twelve of the alien ships in addition to the four already inside weapons range.
“All guns: weapons-free, weapons-free,” he called out confidently as he turned to the tactical officer. “Tac? Drop me two singularity warheads into the path of each of the other readings. Do it now.” He was rocked forward, bumping into her as he steadied himself and told her again to fire the goddamned warheads.
The bridge shook again, their entire ship rocked by impacts and disrupting their grav-field.
“Shields down to eighty-one percent, Captain,” the second tactical officer reported.
“Boost auxiliary banks to shield array,” he said, wondering how anything could take almost a fifth of his ship’s shields offline in just one pass. Everything on Earth, singularity weapons notwithstanding, would bounce off like kids throwing rocks at a dropship. “I want th—”
A huge, resounding boom of an explosion silenced him as the tremor of the impact vibrated through his whole body.
“Two targets down,” tactical shouted. “Second one just took a dive into our port flank. Port shields at sixty-eight percent.”
“We can’t take hits like that all day,” Hayes growled. “Have we got every gun firing?”
“Yes, sir,” an officer called out.
Another round of resonating small booms rippled up from his boots through the captain’s legs.
“Ventral shields took a major hit, sir. We’re getting chewed up out here!”
Hayes had no time to tell that crewman to get a grip on himself before another report fired back at him.
“Warheads detonated; two targets down but one more incoming.”
“On screen,” he ordered again, wanting to see the enemy who was carving up his well-armed frigate with their swarm of smaller ships.
Sixteen goddamned ships, he thought sourly. The Hammer is not going to fall to a handful of alien pirates…
“Target down,” called the woman from tactical. “Five remaining.”
Hayes looked at the screen. It looked like a big bug from one of the many hot swamps he had been in during his career with the UNPF.
He watched as one broke off from the mini swarm of three and headed straight for the viewfinder linked to his screen. It wasn’t running a collision course straight at him, but it sure as hell felt like it.
“Bring us about,” he ordered the helm. “Plot a half-second jump back toward our original insertion point.”
The helmsman hesitated, glancing at the navigation and comm officers who shared his horror.
“Do it now, crewman,” Hayes ordered, sitting back down in his chair and setting a grim look on his face.
“Hit it!”
Admiral Dassiova ignored the verbal reports from his large bridge crew, instead electing to block out the non-essential external sounds and concentrate on interpreting the display beside him. He saw the Hammer, its shield strength readings showing in simple and—worryingly—rapidly declining digits. He saw, in the left margin, the ammo reserves of the guns also ticking down as almost every cannon chattered away on full-auto at the multiple attackers buzzing around it. He watched the big ship spin fast; maneuvering thrusters on the front and back on each side firing together to slew the massive space tank around on the spot so that it pointed directly back toward the enemy.
Dassiova saw the number of enemy on the display, saw how fast the shields were being degraded, and knew exactly what Hayes was about to do.
He was bringing their knives to the Venture’s gunfight.
“Shields to maximum,” he ordered. “Turn us about: one hundred degrees starboard, order all guns to stand ready.”
Nobody hesitated. His orders were obeyed before the Hammer vanished from the display. He worried for a moment if he had been correct in ordering the Norton to stay behind and guard the Cortez in deep space. The Hammer was getting badly beat up without her sister ship to bounce off. He pushed that thought away, snapping his fingers as he pointed to a comm officer.
“Signal the Norton on subspace; tell them to jump in immediately and come out swinging with everything they have.”
“Sir, the Hammer has jumped back toward us!” the tactical officer cried out.
“I’m aware of that,” Dassiova said patiently. “Open warhead bays and prepare to target the enemy ships.”
The five remaining ships had now become nine with the arrival of a further two cloaked pods. They were heading straight for the beleaguered half a fleet in orbit over a firefight on the surface that was all but over.
Brandt could barely breathe. The heavy plate of her armor restricted her limbs without power to the movement servos. All she could do was take small breaths and move her eyes over the menu commands.
Her HUD told her that Byrne and Marcus were still alive, but both were flashing warning triangles above their icons.
She didn’t know if either of them—hell if any of them—were going to make it back alive. Just as the furthest monster away found its target and churned up the earth and rock around Chopra, the creature under the boots of Specter landed a clawed hook hard against his abdomen. His whole body flashed electric blue as the personal shield that was built into him absorbed the kinetic energy.
But energy always had to go somewhere, and in this case, it flung him through the air. He spun wildly and lost his primary weapon, before hitting the ground hard three paces from where Zero was rapidly pulling the trigger of his battle rifle. The marksman’s attention was drawn to the hideous creature that rose up, one limp arm dangling lifelessly by a single, stubborn sinew. Its battered body oozed a black, oily substance from the mess of bullet wounds that had penetrated the thick carapace. With the two remaining good hands on one side it raised its gun and took aim at Specter.
Zero faced a terrible choice. Beside him was a very valuable soldier; a remarkable machine worth a handful of regular troops in battle. Ahead of him, under increasing fire, Chopra faced death in seconds if he couldn’t turn the tide of attack away from her.
He tried to save both of them.
Keeping the rifle pulled in close to his shoulder, Zero released the grip with his left hand and reached behind his back to snatch the mobile cover device.
He tossed it just past Specter who was struggling to regain his feet and watched as three rapid-fired bolts of orange energy hit the shield. The percentage readout flashed a warning on his HUD: it was already at only fifty-six percent. He hoped that the few seconds and the two salvos of alien fire that the cover would give Specter would be enough for him to get back in the fight or get to safety. His rate of fire had lessened as he did this, but as he turned around he saw that those precious heartbeats spent trying to do two things at once had given their enemy the advantage.
