Expendable Heroes, page 12
“What's the bet that the scientists ran into the same problem?”
“I can see only one way we have doing this,” Steven said. “We have to stay invisible to this defence system, which means we have to take the long way.”
Luciane said, “But we don’t know the boundaries of this system. The ascent craft might be in the middle of it.”
“The hillside is going to be tough going,” Rollo said.
Yes, it would be. The terrain was steep and the boulders and tree roots made it hard to traverse. Ahead, light glinted off the water in a glimpse between the trees. Rafts of weeds floated lazily on the surface.
“We’ll also subject ourselves to the slimy poison if we have to go along the lake,” Steven said.
Rollo snorted. “Either that, or be shot by lasers.”
“That is some choice.”
Luciane said, “How about you drive the buggy and we crawl behind it and we do that very very slowly, so that it doesn't trigger sensor warnings?”
“Hmmm,” Jack said. “We can try. We’ll have to go across the flattest terrain we can find, because I don’t fancy sticking my head up, so I won’t be able to see where we’re going.”
“That means going along the lake?” Luciane said.
“Probably. When we get there, we’ll see how we can reach the area above the waterfall.”
She blew out a breath. “Without getting shot at, I presume?”
“If we get shot at, then at some point we’ll have to sacrifice our resources and shoot back. But only when we’re within reach of the ascent vehicle.”
“If it’s operational enough to get off the surface,” Rollo said.
“I don’t like all those ifs,” Luciane said.
“No, me neither, but it’s all we got,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Rollo said. “Let’s kick some alien butt.”
Without sticking his head above the edge, Jack set the buggy moving. It went very, very slowly.
Luciane crawled at the front, Rollo behind her and Steven at the back.
He was glad he’d been right about the movement sensor and also that the sensors did not pick up the slow pace. That had just been a hunch and might well have been wrong.
Very slowly, they crawled along. There was no more shooting. They were probably outside the range of the system now, Steven guessed.
The problem was that Jack couldn't see where he was going, and the forward sensors on the buggy didn’t register where the shore ended and the water started because of the floating plants, so when they reached the lake shore, the front wheels rolled into the water, and they didn’t even notice until Luciane slipped and almost fell.
“Fuck it, Jack. You’re driving us into the lake!”
He stopped the buggy, and tried to reverse.
The mud was slippery, either from the slime or through fine sediment, and the wheels just churned mud into the water.
“Wait, wait!” Steven held up his hand. “All of us, push it back. Jack, reverse slowly.”
With Luciane out the front and Steven and Rollo at the sides, they pushed, and Jack tried to reverse, but the front wheels just churned water and the rear wheels slipped on the plant slush. Steven copped a spray of water.
“Stop, this is not getting us anywhere!” Mud dripped from Luciane’s face. “This crap is probably not healthy for us either.”
“Yeah.” Just the thought made Steven’s face itch.
“There is a rope in the emergency kit,” Jack said.
Steven was closest to the kit. He attached one end of the rope to the undercarriage of the buggy and then considered the open space to the start of the tree cover.
“Is it going to be safe for me to cross that distance?”
Luciane picked up a handful of plant stems and threw them into the exposed area. They landed with a wet splash, but nothing else happened. So it was indeed just an automated defence system? It might well have been set up by some aliens thousands of years ago.
Steven crawled back up the bank with the end of the rope.
There weren’t many trees to attach it to, and the only one the rope could reach was a scrappy tree right in front of the glass wall.
Steven stood at the base of this tree, looking up at the sheer smoothness of the wall. From his position down near the water, he couldn’t see any of the lights they’d seen earlier. The glass seemed dark and lifeless. Right now, he even wondered whether the blue glimmers had been a trick of the light.
He tied the rope around the trunk of the tree and gave Jack the all clear to winch the buggy out. That was not as easy as it looked, because the boulders on the shoreline were large and very slippery.
But eventually they reached dry land, dripping with mud and they stood in front of the glass wall.
“If they haven’t killed us by now, they’re a bunch of incompetent aliens,” Luciane said.
“My guess is that it’s an autonomous system and its owners have long gone,” Steven said.
Jack snorted. “We might still have a bunch of mutant scientists after us.”
“This stuff stinks,” Rollo said.
Yes, it did.
Steven also felt completely exhausted. He looked up at the sheer wall. The ascent vehicle was at the top. On the closer side of the waterfall, the incline was very steep and covered in a tangle of vegetation. They would have to figure a way to get around, because the other side was less steep.
“We’re not going to be able to take the buggy to the top of the waterfall,” he said. “The boulders are too big and it’s too steep.”
Jack said, “We can use the winch.”
“The chain isn’t long enough,” Rollo said.
Well, crap.
“How are we going to get our stuff to the craft?” Luciane asked. “Carry it up by hand?”
Steven hoped not.
Maybe one of them could climb to the top of the waterfall and they could winch everything up. But some of the stuff was heavy and the entire shoreline was covered with plants. And then there was this alien wall that they had no idea what it might do and who or what might be watching. And there were creatures with sharp claws in the forest that might eat them, and there might still be mutant scientists roaming about.
“What’s that noise?” Rollo said, alarmed, a mere second before the heavens opened.
Big, fat drops splatted down, making a hissing, thrumming noise on the water, on the ground and the metal of the buggy. Steven was already wet, but the water now ran down his neck into his suit.
“You know what? I’m done,” Luciane said.
She stood with her arms wide, soaked through, covered in mud, her dark hair hanging in strings down the sides of her head.
She sounded, and looked, exhausted, a picture of how Steven felt.
“Yeah, let’s find a dry spot and have a rest,” Jack said.
That was easier said than done.
There was a tent in the packs of supplies on the back of the buggy, but just the idea of setting it up drained the energy from Steven’s mind.
CHAPTER 18
“We can take shelter there,” Rollo said. He pointed.
On the right hand side, at the bottom of where the glass wall melded with the rocks, was a recess like a small cave.
“Oh, I don’t know that I trust that thing.” Luciane looked doubtful.
“Any better suggestions?” Rollo said. “I don’t want to put up the tent out here in the open where we’re just going to be sitting ducks. I much rather have something at my back.”
“Even an alien wall?”
“We don’t know that it’s an artificial construction,” Jack said.
“It is,” Luciane and Steven said at the same time.
Steven met Luciane’s eyes. Rainwater dripped from her hair over her face, making tracks in the cover of mud on her forehead and cheeks. He didn’t think he had ever seen anyone so thoroughly spent.
“Let’s not bicker about this,” he said. “We need rest and we need food. I don’t know what the time is, but we probably need to find shelter for the night as well.”
Luciane gave him a glance as if she wanted to say thank you.
So, the cave at the bottom of the wall, it was.
Jack drove the buggy with Steven walking along the side facing the lake, Luciane with the laser on the other side and Rollo following behind.
The ground was solid underfoot, and cover of plants not yet thick enough to gunk up the wheels on the buggy.
The area immediately under the glass cliff sloped steeply up and was completely overgrown with plants, which would provide limited shelter from view once they could get to the cave. The glass walls were too smooth for the stems to find any purchase. After directing sprays of acid at a path between the buggy and the cave, the plants wilted away and disintegrated into mush, and they discovered something else.
“Wait, are those steps?” Luciane asked.
She pushed weeds aside with the foot section of her suit. There was smooth stone underneath.
Yes, they looked very much like steps made for creatures taller than humans, because they were at about knee height.
At least ten of these steps led up into the cave.
“My turn to stick out my neck,” Steven said.
“I’ll cover you,” Luciane said, holding the laser.
With the suit, Steven had no issue climbing up the tall steps. He turned around halfway and looked over the lake. Rafts of weed floated on the surface and clung to the edges of the water. Dark forest towered over the undisturbed hillsides. Everywhere light reached these infernal weeds made life impossible. Almost as if the planet defended itself against anything that destroyed the vegetation.
He continued to the cave and found it deeper than it had looked from a distance.
It was dry. The ground was firm underfoot. He shoved away a few sickly-looking plant tendrils that had ventured into the dark space underneath the overhang. The left side wall consisted of rock that looked natural. Thick glass made up the back wall. It was very smooth and looked black. He peered into its depths but couldn’t see anything on the other side.
“It’s safe. You can come up here,” he called to the others.
They took the packs that contained food, their transmitter, blankets and water up the steps.
“That acid stuff well and truly destroys this plant shit,” Luciane said.
“Only for a short time,” Rollo said, while dumping two rolled up sleeping mats.
They were so tired that they made a chain up the steps where Jack took additional things off the buggy, handed them to Rollo, who handed them to Luciane and she handed them to Steven.
It was still pouring and it was now starting to go dark.
Steven opened the container with survival supplies and set up their light and then handed out packets of food. The ones labelled chicken stew and cooked rice needed water and heating, so they set up the camp stove in the middle of the cave, poured water in the pan and waited for it to cook.
Luciane took off her overalls and went to wash them under the waterfall, an expedition that required her to shuffle along the glass wall.
Steven asked if she could see the blue lights behind the glass and she said she could not.
It must have been a trick of the light.
“I think we can be happy that we made it this far today without any disasters,” Jack said. “Tomorrow, we will climb to the top of the waterfall and assess the ascent craft.”
Steven thought that any of them only felt cautiously optimistic about their progress. He clutched his coffee cup in his hands while looking over the lake in the rain. The muscles in his legs hurt from crawling and pushing the buggy.
“Hey, what’s that?” Rollo said.
His tone made Steven turn around, a feeling of alarm creeping over him.
Rollo was pointing at the glass wall at the back of the cave. Now that it was getting dark, it showed something that daylight had obscured: a faint light glowed within. It was a dim, greenish light, but it made Steven’s hair stand on end. It looked distant, like there was a large space behind the glass.
“Fuck, this looks like a building,” Luciane said.
“I would be a lot happier if we knew who the hell made this,” Rollo said.
Jack snorted. “Yeah. This structure looks like it is an entrance and we’re now in the foyer of some alien office.”
Luciane got up and ran her hands over the surface.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
“If this is a building, there has got to be some sort of entrance, right? I’m just making sure we’re not going to be relaxing in some alien’s entrance hall and they might be nocturnal.”
“Don’t know if relaxing is ever going to be a thing.”
Rollo was pushing stems of dead plants into a heap with his foot while drinking his coffee.
At the bottom of the steps, the buggy stood forlorn in the pouring rain. Steven hoped it wouldn’t rain too long, because the plants would cover it.
“Hey, this thing has an opening,” Luciane said. “Just as I thought.”
She stood in the very corner of the cave, where the glass met the natural rock. She had jammed a screwdriver in a groove in between the glass and the stone.
Steven dragged the light over and directed the beam onto the back wall.
In the glow, it was clear just how smooth the glass was. Not a speck of dirt or scratch marked the surface.
Luciane was right, there was a very thin groove in between the glass and the rock wall, as if someone had cut a slot out of the rock for the glass inset. But what kind of machinery could do that on this scale? The glass wall was easily ten metres high and twenty across.
“Look, it moves,” Luciane said.
She pushed the screwdriver to the side. Yes, it looked like a glass panel stood loose against the rock. With some pushing, she had made a tiny gap between it and the rock, wide enough for her fingertips.
“Help me.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea, Luce?” Steven asked. “You might be waking up whatever is inside.”
“If there is anything inside, I want to know about it. Because I’m sure it already knows about us. If we have to fight it, I rather fight it on the ground than than that they shoot us out of the air when we take off in the ascent craft.”
“Can’t argue with that logic,” Jack said.
He reached over Luciane’s shoulders and inserted his fingers in between the rock and the glass.
Together, they pulled. Rollo and Steven stood uselessly to the side because there wasn’t any room for more people.
“Make yourself useful, grab the laser,” Luciane said to Rollo.
He pulled the laser out of her waist band while she and Jack struggled with the door. Steven grabbed the second laser.
The opening grew wider.
“If anything comes out, shoot it,” Luciane said.
Then something made a clicking noise, and the glass panel tilted sideways.
Luciane and Jack lost their balance and almost fell on top of each other.
Steven stared into the dark opening beyond the glass wall.
Rollo stepped back. “Whoa.”
He held the laser half raised ready for use.
Humid air wafted out of the dark maw, mixed with a stale scent of wet stone.
“Hello? Anyone there?” Jack called.
There was no sound.
Jack took a step into the entrance and then another one. He disappeared behind the glass panel. It was so dark inside that Steven could only see an indistinct wall inside the opening.
Rollo lifted his arm with the weapon and pointed it into the darkness.
At that moment, an almighty screech echoed across the lake behind them.
CHAPTER 19
Steven whirled around to see three figures in mech suits running towards the entrance while screaming in unintelligible voices. One was at the bottom of the steps, the other two crashed through the plant growth like mad bulls. They only wore the internal harness of the suit, not the body protection, helmet or control panel. And the harness had lost most of its paint and was stained.
The three were—or had once been—people, but now they looked monstrous, with red skin, bloodshot, mad eyes and raw patches on their skin like the previous man Simon who had attacked in the forest. They had to be three of the scientists, but their faces were red and puffy, their hair had fallen out, making it impossible to recognise any of them.
There was utter malicious madness in their eyes.
“Holy fuck, stop those bastards!” Luciane yelled. Her eyes were wide.
Rollo discharged the laser.
The beam hit the first figure, who went tumbling down the stairs and hit a second person, who pushed the fallen figure aside and kept running.
Steven discharged the second laser, by which time Rollo’s weapon had recharged and he took care of the third one.
It was all over in a few seconds, after which an eerie silence settled over the scene.
The bodies lay on the steps, in between the entrance and the buggy.
“Oh fuck, I hate this,” Rollo said, dropping the weapon to his waist. “There is a reason I hated being in the military.”
For a while, the soft patter of rain was the only sound.
Then Luciane jumped down the steps and inspected the bodies. Steven remained at the top of the steps, scanning the forest edge while holding the laser, in case it had been a trap. It was hard to see in the rain and impending darkness.
“Man, that was stupid of them,” Luciane said. “They weren’t even armed.”
“They obviously wanted to get into this entrance,” Jack said. “We opened it for them.”
“Surely they could open it themselves?” Rollo said. He jumped down the top step to inspect the first body. He pulled a face. “Yeah, these are just like the previous ones. All infected with growth.”
“They nearly caught us off-guard,” Jack said. “We’re going to have to guard our backs better. Have weapons at the ready at all times. Carry all our stuff up here out of sight before we do anything else.”
“Yes, sarge!” Rollo said.
