Worthy of time, p.2
Worthy of Time, page 2
Rodriguez activated the SCOPE icon on his display, and another screen dropped over his main viewer. The extra screen overlay magnified things by a factor of fifty at the highest setting. In these low-light conditions, even with the compensation provided by the suit, magnification fell to about a factor of twenty.
Still, that meant anything not well camouflaged within about seventy meters of their position should be visible.
Wessler tapped into Rodriguez’s display so they could share the same magnified view. As the leader of the unit, it was essential for Wessler to be able to take in multiple points of view and types of information without tying up his heads-up display functions with the same protocol.
A side corridor came into view about twenty meters to the left of the main corridor they were in. It was positioned in such a way that Rodriguez’s SCOPE could see partially inside, maybe a meter deep. The walls there emitted a reddish hue rather than the blue they’d encountered so far. Wessler’s thermal sensors also detected elevated heat levels.
Other than that, there was nothing else in sight along the main corridor.
“What do you think?” asked Rodriguez.
“You take Fire Team One. I’ll take Two. Let’s go investigate that gash in the wall. Teams Three and Four hold position here.”
Rodriguez went first, running low and fast for five meters. He then crouched, looked around and waved his team forward. Wessler followed, running five meters past Team One’s position on the opposite side of the corridor, then waving Team Two forward.
The two fire teams covered the total distance in a few seconds and were now positioned five meters from the side entryway, crouched low with weapons drawn.
“How’s our six looking?” he called to teams Three and Four.
Green lights appeared in his heads-up display, indicating all clear.
“OK, get ready. I’ll take point. Let’s move in. Slowly,” said Wessler.
Wessler led the two fire teams into the mouth of the side corridor, Rodriguez following closely behind him and the rest of the two fire teams bringing up the rear.
They could immediately feel the external temperature of their EVAs rising and their visors compensating for the new light, but it was nothing the suits couldn’t handle.
Wessler’s feet began to drag, but his suit indicated it was compensating for any local variations in gravity by adjusting to Earth-normal.
“Rodriguez, how do you feel?”
“Heavy, sir.”
“Me too.”
Still they moved forward, the corridor twisting and turning at sharp angles and the space getting more and more claustrophobic as they made their way in deeper.
A sudden turn to the right brought the fire teams to a tunnel crossing.
“We’re not following this crossing,” Wessler said into the general channel. “Let’s just see how far we can explore this branch we’re on now and get back to the main corridor.”
Wessler knew they were entering dangerous territory. Standard military doctrine called for placing a guard at every intersection, every ambush position and every vital line of retreat. They could not afford getting cut off from the rest of the squad, especially as they were already cut off from the main Marine force he hoped was still somewhere in the Structure.
Just as the last fire team crossed the intersection, the ground began to rumble.
Wessler didn’t know what was happening, but he took this as a cue that it was time to get out — now!
“Fall back!” shouted Wessler into the squad channel. “Fall back now! Back to the hill!”
Teams Three and Four where closest to the intersection and were the first to cross it. To their left and right, the Marines could see the ground bubbling up with what appeared to be miniature tanks flopping through the holes in the ground and firing on the Marines’ positions. The red-hued walls made the tanks look all the more murderous in their attack.
The fire teams were now separated by the corridor filling with mini tanks.
Wessler and Rodriguez were with teams One and Two on the far side of the intersection, while teams Three and Four held the side nearest the exit and the hill, where the rest of the squad had been told to wait.
All four teams opened fire on the mini tanks, while the tanks returned fire with pinpoints of hot, visible light.
Lasers.
That is a blessing, Wessler thought. Had they been human tanks, they’d be firing explosives, which would have blown them to bits in the tight quarters of the corridor.
The Marines’ return rifle fire was having very little effect. Individual blasts would seem to slow or stun the tanks but weren’t doing enough damage.
Wessler had an idea.
“Rodriguez! Have Team One slave their weapons to yours. Tomly, have Team Three slave theirs to your weapon. Team Two, you will slave your rifles to mine. Team Four, slave your weapons to Young’s”
Wessler knew his squad’s strengths and weaknesses well. Rodriguez, Tomly and Young were the best marksmen in the squad, while he was almost as good as Young.
Slaving a fire team’s weapon to another Marine’s weapon meant that all could be aimed and fired in unison. They’d all be hitting the exact same spot at the exact same time, packing a much more powerful punch.
Rodriguez took aim first, waiting the two seconds for all his team’s weapons to sync together. Steadying his sights on one of the mini tanks ten meters down the left corridor, he pulled the trigger and fired.
Molten metal splattered from the mini tank’s armored flank, flying onto the corridor walls and stopping it dead in its tracks.
“It’s working, sir!” said Rodriguez.
Slaving the fire team’s weapons together was having the intended affect. Each beam that hit the minis had four times the power of a single rifle. But it was slow going, with the squad being able to engage just four targets at a time, while the minis emerged from the ground at a rate of ten per second.
“Change of plan!” shouted Wessler into the squad comm. “Fire Teams Three and Four, unslave your weapons and fire at the nearest tank access points to your position. Maybe we can shut them in. Teams One and Two, keep firing on the nearest tanks.”
Both fire teams unloaded their magazines at the nearest access points, with promising results.
The rocky ground cover around each access point melted and bubbled over, pouring into the interior of the access holes and burning into the mini tanks as they tried to emerge.
A number of the small tanks did manage to climb out of their holes but were soon slowed as the molten rock began to cool on their surfaces and in the nooks and crannies of their tracked undercarriages.
After several minutes of continuous fire from all teams, new mini tanks stopped emerging from the ground and the remaining units were dispatched by the slaved weapons of Fire Teams One and Two.
“Good job, people!” Wessler said. “Now let’s get back to the hill and link up with the rest of the squad.”
Wessler motioned for Rodriguez to lead the teams out and back into the main corridor.
Rodriguez looked at Wessler, who was now standing about a foot from one of the red, glowing walls.
“I’ll be right behind you. Signal me once the team is in the main corridor.”
“Yes sir,” replied Rodriguez and jogged back to the head of the retreating force.
Wessler pressed a button on his left wrist, which opened a small compartment in the arm of his EVA suit. He pulled out a long, slender probe and pressed the tip against the wall. Holding it there with his left hand, he keyed in some commands with his right hand on the pad housed along with the probe.
His heads-up display lit with information regarding the red, backlit wall.
According to his instruments, the wall was a basalt-like rocky compound, with an apparent melting temperature of one thousand degrees Celsius, which meant that to melt one kilogram of the material, he’d need to pump it with about nine hundred kilo joules of energy.
Standard Marine laser rifles fired rounds that yielded approximately three hundred kilo joules of energy per one-second bursts. In theory, the squad could melt the walls to prevent further mini tanks from emerging into the corridor, but that would be impractical and too difficult to pull off. It would be hard to ensure that all or even most of the melted material pooled properly to form a significant barrier for the tanks.
Wessler signaled to Rodriguez using his heads-up. “Teams all clear?”
A few seconds went by before Rodriguez replied, “Just through, sir. We’ve just emerged into the main corridor. Have visual and radio contact with the rest of the squad. Do you need assistance, sir?”
“No. Move the squad back to our hill position. I’m going to make it hard for any more of those mini tanks to follow us once they figure out how to open their fox holes again.”
“Understood, sir. Teams One through Four heading back to the hill.”
“Good,” said Wessler, and closed the channel.
Reaching an arm behind him and pressing a knuckle into a curve on the lower back of his EVA opened a compartment positioned midway up the spine of the suit. From there, he pulled out two smooth, black, six-inch-diameter disks.
The blast discs were designed to pack a variable explosive yield, up to about two thousand five hundred kilo joules, or the equivalent of ten standard issue infantry grenades. Two blast discs would yield twice that output and the blast effects would be magnified in the close confines of the red, glowing corridors.
That was the main reason they hadn’t tried using explosives during their battle with the mini tanks.
He set one blast disc at the base of each corridor wall — one on the left and one on the right.
By his calculations, the blast would completely collapse this portion of the tunnel intersection and extend for several meters in all directions. Assuming the mini tanks could only make egress from where they first met them — and Wessler admitted to himself that was a dangerous gamble to make — the collapse would prevent the minis from emerging from this location and attacking them again.
He set the timers to sixty seconds and ran back the way they had come.
When he emerged into the main, blue-lit corridor, he flashed a “DOWN!” command to the squads waiting at the peak of the hill.
As ordered, their heads went down for cover, and as his clock ran down to fifty-eight seconds, he dove towards the ground, executing a flip in the air and landing on his back. From there, he positioned his feet flat on the ground with his shins perpendicular to the floor, using the EVA’s thick, hardened boots as shielding against the blast that would be going off … NOW!
A shockwave rumbled out of the red corridor, showering the immediate area just outside with small boulders, shards and dust of red, glowing material.
A metal shard, possibly used to reinforce the structure internally, lodged itself two inches into Wessler’s left boot shin. Taught to every Alcmene Marine recruit, use of the shield-in-place technique had saved Wessler’s EVA suit vitals from a potentially damaging blow.
With the problem of the mini tanks put on ice (at least temporarily), the squad was now ready to resume their march through this Structure, find their way back to their colleagues and, Wessler hoped, get out of what was increasingly starting to feel like a prison.
Marine Private Alexander Lotte
System: Virgil’s star (VGL 191)
Location: A cubed chamber somewhere inside the Structure
Marine Private Alexander Lotte felt a deep cold penetrating his bones. He was floating somewhere, alone, feeling not exactly lost but having no idea where he was. Drifting as he was in a floating sea of cold tranquility, he forced his mind to focus. Having nothing external to focus on, he remembered his yoga training, and focused on his breathing.
Minutes — no, hours — or maybe days passed for Alex as he drifted along in that floating dream state, his breath the only reminder that there was a world outside this place.
He dreamed so many dreams that he could hardly remember what it was like not to dream. And finally, after dreaming one monstrously incomprehensible dream, his eyes slowly fluttered open, protesting at the need to adjust to the faint blue light of his surroundings.
He was now firmly in the physical world. He was lying on his back, on a hard, cool surface. He looked down towards his feet and saw that he was completely naked. His EVA suit was nowhere in sight and his coveralls were gone, as were his rifle and other equipment.
Sitting up, he felt a deep ache in his back. He looked around and realized he was in some type of chamber. It was a clean cube, judging it to be perhaps thirty meters on each side. Each wall of the cube was equally lit by a soft blue even light, not unlike the walls he’d last seen when he, Major Lewis and Private Martinez were retreating back towards the shuttles.
That felt like a long time ago. Even years ago, although he doubted it had been that long. The last thing he remembered was running towards Martinez while Martinez laid down cover fire, and then feeling a rush of heat and a shock wave that threw him violently into the air. He recalled a horrible crash and a searing pain in his back, and then things went to black.
Alex shook his head. Whatever had happened after that must have been recent, he thought, given that his fingernails hadn’t grown since he’d last looked at them, and his hair was still cut short, military-crew style. He recalled very clearly having shaved about an hour before their final mission briefing, which was three hours before he and his squad boarded Falcon One to explore the Structure.
Judging by the roughness of his face, whatever had happened to him must have happened just a few hours ago.
Alex got up on his feet and slowly walked around the perimeter of the chamber, counting his steps. Sure enough, the space was indeed thirty meters on a side. Looking up toward the ceiling, he estimated the same distance in that direction.
“OK,” Alex thought. “What else do I know?”
He made a mental list.
Someone took my EVA suit and all my equipment. I’m literally naked.
There are no friendlies here. And no hostiles here either. I’m alone.
The environment here is suitable for humans. But I’m cold.
“Not a good situation to be in,” he mumbled to himself.
He knew, however, that someone must have brought him here. And whoever that was knew enough about humans to provide Alex with a breathable atmosphere. That meant that his captors wanted something from him, which meant they’d need him alive, for a time at least.
So there was hope.
Having nothing else to do, he decided to run through some yoga asanas to help warm up and focus his mind.
He began with a series of ten sun salutations. After the tenth, he got into downward dog position and rocked back and forth on his heels. That gave him a good stretch and he was now feeling warmer and more limber. The ache in his back was still there but not as bothersome, for which he was grateful.
Steadying his downward dog position, he went into a plank and lifted into an upward facing dog.
Feels good, Alex thought as his muscles warmed, and his body stretched in a satisfying way.
After a few rounds of a down dog to plank to up dog sequence, Alex stood up, reached his arms overhead and yawned.
He was refreshed and more alert now. Stronger and more confident. And while he might be vulnerable, he realized that he didn’t feel any fear. Despite being alone, naked and in what he knew to be a very dangerous situation, for some reason he could not fathom he felt no fear.
Almost on cue with his thoughts, a panel in the far wall from where Alex was facing slid up about six inches. Nothing happened immediately, and Alex thought it might be a way out. However, that idea was dashed as a six-inch cylindrical object crawled out from the panel, the door slamming shut after it cleared the panel’s threshold.
Whatever the cylinder was, it appeared to be walking on dozens of thin spindly legs that were about three inches long. Though it was silvery and appeared metallic, there was a quality to its shape and movement that made Alex immediately think of a centipede.
The cylinder-centipede began moving towards Alex at a slow but steady pace. Alex looked around the chamber but there was literally nothing he could use as a tool or weapon. Unwilling to let it get near him, he began walking backwards in a direct line away from the centipede, figuring it would follow him in a straight line whatever direction he went. That way, Alex could keep backing away from it while also keeping enough maneuvering space to his left or right as needed, to keep it at distance. As if it sensed his strategy, the centipede began moving faster, quickly closing the distance to about five meters. At this close range, Alex saw that the cylinder was not one continuous piece of material but rather made up of six one-inch-wide sections. Each section bent and rotated with some independence from the others, which presumably allowed the centipede to more easily walk over obstacles or rough terrain.
Alex continued backing away, walking along the perimeter of the chamber, left hand feeling against the wall while he kept his eyes on the centipede.
It closed the distance again, this time to just under a meter. The thing was frightening to look at, and Alex now felt very exposed and vulnerable. Instinctively, he lowered his right hand to cover his groin area, while keeping the left hand on the wall to guide himself as he continued to back away.
When the centipede closed the distance to half a meter, Alex decided that he’d treat this like any other bug.
He took a deep breath, one long look at the centipede and then made a running leap for it. The centipede seemed confused and froze in place for half a second, just enough time for Alex to land on its back, heel first, smashing the spindly legs that supported it and crushing the three middle sections of the cylinder.
“Oorah!” Alex exclaimed. Followed by, “That hurt!” as he lifted his foot and rubbed the striking heel with his hand.
Shaking out his legs, he bent over and picked up the cylinder. Definitely not organic. A robotic centipede? For what? Whatever the reason for its construction, it gave Alex an idea.
