Starfighter Down Read online

  Neither was Charlie, who unclipped a remote-activated charge from his belt and said, “We’ll need a diversion.”

  Everyone looked at the priest. Father Pohl nodded solemnly. He’d obviously expected this, and Elya wondered if they’d had time to plan this last night, or while he’d been chatting with Thom on the hike.

  The priest took the charge from Charlie. “I’ll set it off there.” He pointed at the forest beyond the compound. “That should draw them away, give you enough time to get in and out again.”

  “What if the groundlings find you?” Elya asked.

  “Animus will protect me.”

  Elya looked at the man, biting back a reply. Same old story. But as long as they helped him make contact with the Fleet, they could take whatever risks they pleased. It was no skin off his back.

  “Just in case, Brill and Taylix will go with you,” Charlie added, his voice making it clear that though he deferred to Father Pohl, this point was not up for discussion. “Set the charge on a tree two klicks west of the encampment—no farther than that. They need to be able to see and hear it. When they do, the groundlings should go to investigate.”

  “And how are we supposed to get through the fence?” Elya asked.

  Thom waved a U-shaped steel handle with a battery pack attached to it. “I’ll use this laser cutter to slice through it.”

  Elya bowed his head and felt Hedgebot scamper nervously to his other shoulder. They had clearly planned this already—without him. His first reaction was annoyance. If this were his squad… but it wasn’t. He didn’t have to work with these people long term. He only had to get through this mission alive. Elya shoved his irritation away. “That just leaves the two sentinels.”

  “With luck, they’ll be drawn to the explosion as well,” Charlie said. “Regardless, we’ll enter in their blind spot at the northeast corner, behind the prefab buildings. Set charges on the comms array close enough to kill the creature causing the jamming, then run before they notice we’re even there.”

  That would destroy Slocum’s comms array, too, but as long as the equipment was in Kryl possession it posed too great a risk to leave it operational. Otherwise they’d have to come back and do it again.

  “And if luck isn’t on our side?” Lady luck hadn’t exactly been friendly to him lately, Elya knew.

  “You’ve got charge on your blaster, haven’t you?”

  Elya inhaled through his nose and blew the breath out as he checked the power, then nodded reluctantly. During the hike, he’d used a portable battery pack of Thom’s to partially recharge the weapon. His heart fluttered in his chest.

  Next to him, Thom bounced his leg and licked his lips nervously. Elya could relate. He didn’t want to do this. It was risky. It was dangerous. And there would almost certainly be a fight. But he didn’t see another choice.

  Plus, the evacuation deadline was drawing close. Elya had only a handful of hours left. Even now, he knew, they were likely ferrying the last shuttle of civilians to the Mammoths. If Elya didn’t signal the Fleet that he was still alive, and soon, they would certainly leave him behind.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  Elya held his breath as a large groundling crept into view and lifted its nose into the air, sniffing, sensing.

  Beside him, Thom sweated buckets, wiping his palms on his jeans every so often. Charlie pressed his back against another tree trunk a few meters from the one Elya and Thom hid behind. Postiss, maintaining her stoic silence, had signaled to Charlie then climbed up into a tree and rested the barrel of her gun on the crotch of a sturdy branch, a makeshift sniper’s nest.

  The groundling pawed at the ground, picking something up in its mouth and forcing it down its gullet with three leaping gulps. It paused, turned toward them—

  Just as Elya was about to draw his blaster, a great explosion erupted in the distance, scattering birds from the canopy. The groundling’s hide rippled as it shivered. Then it let rip a great keening howl before bounding off toward the noise.

  Thom heaved a shaky sigh.

  “Finally,” Elya said. They’d been waiting a damn sight longer than he’d wanted, and the groundling’s sniffing explorations, coming closer with each pass, had been making him nervous.

  “Shh!” Charlie hissed.

  Half a dozen more groundlings suddenly thundered out of the thick forest, loping by at a distance. None of them noticed the four Solarans hiding a hundred meters away.

  Charlie held up his fist. The group waited until the pounding of dozens of clawed feet faded to a soft thudding, then disappeared from hearing range. Still, Charlie waited. When the birds began to settle back in the branches above them and coo nervously into the humid air, he pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s move.”

  Elya found himself following Charlie’s lead, set at ease by the man’s focus and composure under pressure. Whatever disagreement had set them at odds the day before had been left behind, which Elya considered a good thing since this was the most clandestine operation he’d ever been a part of. Being so far outside of his comfort zone, he was leaning entirely on the veteran soldier’s experience and guidance.

  They had agreed that it would be Elya who set the charge and ultimately detonated it, destroying the xeno who had commandeered the comms array. Right now, all he had to do was stay down, keep moving, and not get blindsided by a Kryl. His legs ached and he was winded when they reached the northeast corner of the compound, where the fence had been ripped apart and then re-stitched with Kryl webbing.

  “Eye in the sky,” Postiss said, the first words Elya heard her speak. She tossed out a hand and a drone soared silently upward, floating out over the rooftops of the prefabs.

  Thom approached the fence hesitantly, testing it with a stick and then with a finger. The chain-link itself wasn’t wired to shock, just the lattice near the top, which popped with a soft sszzttt when Thom tossed up a clod of dirt. Any intruder or animal who tried to climb over would be cooked medium well.

  Good thing they weren’t going over.

  The fencing was sturdy and thick, like the kind used on farms for livestock. Thom got to work, taking the U-shaped wire cutter to the bars of the fence. He started by the ragged edge where the sticky yellow-white webbing terminated. A hissing sound filled the air, like water hitting a hot pan, as the laser began to cut through the metal.

  Elya laid his trigger finger along the barrel of his SB-44 and brought it up next to his head as he scanned the woods. He wished he had his bot, but they made him leave it at the rendezvous point for fear it would give away their position with its glowing and uncontrollable scampering. Hedgebot would warn them of danger, sure, but it was no good at sneaking around enemy camps unnoticed, and Elya had readily agreed to leave the bot behind.

  “Sentinels?” Charlie whispered.

  “One at the western fence looking into the woods like he’s got X-ray vision. The other’s stationed at the front door of a prefab, second from the end.” Postiss pointed to the building without lifting her eyes from the screen attached to her rifle, the one that showed the video feed from the drone.

  “Do they know we’re here?”

  “Negative. Leastwise, not yet.”

  No pressure, Elya thought. Thom wiped his wrist across his sweaty forehead. He’d managed to cut through a horizontal section of chain-link about three feet across, plenty wide enough for them to slip through one at a time.

  Elya grabbed the loose section of chain-link and held it firm so it wouldn’t rattle while Tom brought the cutter down the left side and then across the bottom. They switched places as Thom brought the laser back up to meet the original cut, completing the rectangle.

  Elya hauled the section of fence out while melted bits of metal dripped, singeing holes in his flight suit and burning his skin beneath. The pain made him squint and tear up, but the molten metal cooled quickly and the pain passed.

  With Thom’s help, he managed to set the fence gently on the ground with barely a rustle of gr
ass. Thom slipped through the opening, then Charlie, Elya and finally Postiss.

  Turning right, the group snuck single-file along the fenceline towards the communications array—and away from where the sentinels were positioned. It struck Elya as odd that one of them had stayed put at the prefab building’s entrance. It meant that whatever was inside that building was valuable enough to keep a guard stationed there even in the face of danger.

  His train of thought was interrupted when something sticky, gum-like, stuck to the sole of his boot.

  “Ugh—” he began to say when Charlie swiped a hand sideways across his neck, silencing him. Elya swallowed whatever words had been about to come out of his mouth, embarrassed. He carefully set his foot back down in the sticky crap.

  “The one at the fence is moving this way,” Postiss whispered.

  Elya glanced down at the sticky substance, then up at the solar panels in front of him. There were six rows of six panels split by a cluster of antennas and dishes, a unit of batteries that hummed noisily and, between him and all of this equipment, the bulbous sac laced with veins that he’d seen from the ridgeline. Up close it was vaguely purplish-red fading to translucent as it expanded. A tangled ball of red and white strings sat inside, visible through its skin, like intestines. The sac itself must have been three feet tall and twice as wide, and seemed to be twisting in his direction, like a plant toward a light source. He glanced between the sac and his foot. He lifted his boot up and stepped backward off the sticky substance.

  “It stopped,” Postiss reported. “Going back to the fence.”

  “Don’t step on the pus,” Elya whispered. “I think they can tell, like some kind of early warning system.”

  Postiss’ nostrils flared. Charlie cursed under his breath and Thom gulped loud enough to hear.

  “The antennas are surrounded. How do we get in there to set the charge without them noticing?” Now he sorely missed his astrobot. Hedgebot could have carried the charge and placed it for him.

  Elya shoved this thought aside and studied the way intently. The pus leaking out of the sac wasn’t coming out evenly. Some of the panels had been covered over completely by the hairy fungus, while others were only partially coated in the stuff. Where it had lost its yellow color and dulled, the pus had also hardened. Whereas out here on the edge, it was still soft and sticky. Elya picked out a line, starting at the corner. If he climbed along a solar panel, he thought he might be able to get behind the sac and close enough to the comms equipment to set the charges without alerting the Kryl by stepping on the excretions.

  He moved to the corner and climbed onto a solar panel—without getting his boots dirty this time.

  “What the flip are you doing?” Charlie hissed.

  Elya waved him off then put his hand over his mouth as the rancid smell of rotting meat drifted to his nose. From his vantage point atop the solar panel, Elya turned and saw the pile of corpses he had noticed on the lawn beyond the circular track.

  He turned his focus inward, imagining that he was not here perched atop a thin solar panel, but rather in the sim with his helmet on. He pretended that the bodies were auto-generated by the AI, the smell coming through his spinal port as a simulation, and forced his disgust aside. Breathing through his mouth, Elya moved forward, gingerly stepping from one solar panel to the next and watching carefully to avoid landing on the goop.

  He reached the third row, close to the antennas, and paused, looking back at the others. Postiss kept her eye glued to the screen attached to her rifle. Charlie watched in the direction the sentinels were positioned, while Thom watched the direction they had come, still dripping sweat and wringing his hands together. He saw Elya looking and urged him onward with a jerk of his head.

  Looking down at his feet, Elya watched as the yellow pus inched forward from the corner of the panel he stood on and nearly annexed the toe of his boot. He managed to shift positions in time to avoid touching it, but as he did so his weight shifted back and his other foot slipped off the edge, tangling up in a wire. He gasped, kicked the wire loose, and barely caught himself before falling backward.

  Thom took in a sharp breath behind him and when he looked back, Charlie’s eyes were wide as two moons.

  Postiss glanced up from the screen, mouthing, “Incoming!” without saying the word.

  Charlie ran toward the wall of the prefab nearest them, the one at the end of the row, and raised his gauss rifle to his shoulder. Elya heard the coils in the gun ratchet back as he switched off the safety.

  Frantic gestures from Thom caught Elya’s eye and reminded him of his purpose. Like he did when he was flying or training in the sim, Elya shut out everything around him and tapped into that well of hyperfocus that was always there for him when he needed it. His vision narrowed to his immediate surroundings.

  Removing the first charge from his belt, Elya searched the equipment in front of him and found a dish that had a bald spot of metal the pus hadn’t reached. Elya ripped the paper off the back of the charge and stretched, sticking it onto the dish. With quick motions, he stuck another charge onto the panel at his feet, and managed to place a third on a small opening at the base of an antenna, facing the pulsing sac of Kryl fluid. This close to the xeno growth, he could hear a warbling noise that seemed to be coming from the creature itself. That noise was the jamming signal it was broadcasting through the comms array. He stuck another charge on the opposite side, just to be sure the thing would be destroyed. He had to lean way out and down to position the charge correctly, and he nearly fell on his face when a great wah-JEEOHM noise made him jump.

  He yanked his hand back, fearing he’d accidentally triggered one of the explosives, and it took him a second to realize it was the report of Charlie’s rifle. Blood hammered in his ears, drowning out even the roar that erupted from the sentinel as it absorbed the huge round from the coilgun. When Elya glanced up, he saw a cloud of carapace fragments and snot-colored gore spraying backwards. The sentinel’s armored hulk spun halfway around—and caught its balance. It pawed at the patchy grass with a foot and jerked its great, horned head.

  Then it charged.

  “Come on!” Thom shouted, all attempts to keep his volume down forgotten, as he waved the remote in the air.

  Elya quickly re-checked the charges, sent a silent prayer consisting of a single desperate thought—Work!—into the ether, and dashed back across the panels, where he jumped to the ground and spun toward the fence, sprinting after Thom, who had already begun to retreat.

  Postiss recalled her drone and swiped it out of the air. Red blaster bolts fired from her rifle in bursts of three, sizzling against the Kryl’s carapace. Though the shots knocked it off balance, they seemed to enrage it more than harm it. The sentinel rocked back, staggered, then came about.

  Elya didn’t stick around to see what happened next. His line of sight to the sentinel was cut off by the prefabs as he ran along the fenceline behind them. Each time he passed one of the buildings, he glanced through the alley between them, searching for additional threats. In the first alley, nothing. The second, nada. The third, a giant screaming maw. He wondered how the sentinel Postiss had been shooting at got there so quickly, but realized it was the second, the one that had been left behind to guard the building.

  “Hurry!” Thom shouted from the breach in the fence. As Elya passed through the ragged opening, the machinist produced another remote-activated charge.

  Postiss pumped her arms and sprinted toward them, diving through the breach just a few strides ahead of the sentinel, who came roaring and loping forward, its massive armored body shaking the ground with each step. Thom tossed the charge inside the fence, then Postiss turned and pelted the sentinel with more blaster fire.

  Charlie had taken up a position at the treeline. Elya heard the whine of his gauss rifle and staggered clear of his line of fire.

  As the sentinel tore through the fence, a projectile from the coilgun struck it square in the chest, the impact shoving it back. Another
hail of fire from Postiss pushed it back another meter. Elya remembered—belatedly—about his little SB-44. He yanked the blaster pistol out of its holster and hurled a few bolts at the sentinel.

  Combined, the barrage was enough to slow the sentinel down. Thom jammed his finger down on the remote. There was a soft beep-beep-beep followed by a hollow WHUUUMFF as all the charges they’d set exploded at the same time.

  The sentinel transformed into an enormous fountain of dirt, gore, chain-link and carapace. Behind it, the communications array ruptured as the charges went off, sending a cloud of debris into the air. They didn’t stand around to gawk. A cloud of dust chased them back into the forest.

  Though he’d expected Kryl groundlings to come leaping at them out of every gully and from under each log, they encountered none on their hasty withdrawal.

  By the time they made it back to the rendezvous point—a clearing in the woods six or seven klicks from Slocum—Elya’s legs were shaking so hard he barely had any control over his steps. He noted the priest conferring with Taylix and Brill, spotted his rucksack at their feet exactly where he’d left it, and collapsed against a tree trunk nearby.

  “How’d it go?” Brill asked, approaching as Elya drained his water bottle. As soon as he caught his breath, he’d get the other bottle out—and check the tightbeam connection on his cube.

  “Ran into sentinels,” Charlie said. “Thom blew one back into orbit.”

  Brill nodded. “Niiice.”

  The two conferred while Elya rested his head against the trunk and closed his eyes.

  “Heard you set the charges yourself.”

  When Elya opened his eyes, Taylix was standing over him, arms crossed. Her hair was still slicked back and held in a neat ponytail. She had barely broken a sweat.