AMP Colossus (2 page)

I sighed as I looked out of the cockpit window. The planet’s surface was cold and desolate, with high winds having worn down any surface variations to nothing more than slow-moving sand dunes.

I spoke. "Well, let’s get this show on the road. We got ships to build."

Duane pointed at the dig button. "I’ll let you do the honor, Sir. There is nothing like pressing that dig button for the first time."

As I reached out to press the button, Duane quickly grabbed my arm. "You better strap in with that shoulder belt, Sir. It can get bumpy."

I cinched the shoulder strap down and again reached for the dig button. A giant wheel on the front of the harvester began to spin. Several seconds later, the wheel turned down into the soil and the laser cutters began to slice into the earth below us. The harvester then lurched downward as the digging cups plowed through the iron-encrusted dirt, feeding it into the micro-refinery we had on board. The Beast, as Duane had called it, began to jerk and buck as rocks and differing densities of soil were encountered.

I looked over at Duane as my head bobbed back and forth. "It’s not like this for two days, is it?"

Duane laughed as he replied, "No, Sir. This will settle down as we hit the vein. She’s fairly smooth in consistent soil. Give her about ten minutes, and she should settle down."

I rolled my eyes as I gripped the armrests on my chair. Several minutes later, just as Duane had predicted, the violent jerks slowly subsided and were replaced by a smooth, grinding vibration. I settled back in my chair and put my boots up on the console. Duane looked over and smiled as he flipped on some music in the cab.

Duane spoke. "Hope you don’t mind the tunes, Sir. Makes the days pass a little faster."

I shook my head. "It’s your cab. You can—"

My stomach was suddenly up in my throat as the harvester broke through into a large, hollow cavity that had not shown on the scans. We found ourselves falling nearly a hundred meters before the harvester came crashing to a stop on solid rock. The laser wheel separated from the ship and the spinning, hardened metal cups soon ground upwards into the base of the cab. I could hear air escaping at the same moment the power went out. Emergency lighting kicked in, and Duane got to work looking over the console instruments.

Duane spoke. "I would suggest putting on your helmet, Sir. We are going to be out of air in about two minutes. I'm shutting down the recycler and storage so that we can preserve the oxygen we have if we are able to repair her later."

I pulled on my helmet and quickly flipped the latch as I twisted it in place.

I spoke. "Has this ever happened to you before?"

Duane replied, "I've been in this cab for fifteen years, and this is a first. Scans usually pick up the hollows, and we know to avoid 'em. I've never heard of anyone dropping through like that."

I unhitched the strap that held me in my seat. "If we get that air leak fixed, are we going to be able to get out of here?"

Duane stopped and turned his head in my direction. "I think our best bet is just to survive until someone comes looking for us. The ion thrusters were on the base of this rig, and I would say they took the full brunt of that fall, along with the cutting wheel."

I replied, "Well, let's raise the Grid ops on the comm and get somebody down here."

Duane shook his head. "Sorry, Sir, but when you get into an iron vein, the comm system on these diggers doesn't have the power to broadcast through it. That's been a safety concern for years. This is the first time in my memory that it has been an actual problem. But I wouldn't worry too much about it, Sir. They know where we started, and that's where they will begin their search. We made a big hole up there; shouldn't be too hard to find it."

With the remaining oxygen secured, we opened the cab and stepped out onto the maintenance deck. Shredded, bent, and torn metal made half of the deck impassable.

Duane spoke. "We aren't repairing the Beast, Sir. She's had it. Those cups ripped right through her guts. She's got nothing left but spare parts on her now."

Duane turned and placed his hand on the cab. "Goodbye, old girl. We had a good run."

With the harvester down, I turned my focus to the expansive cavern that was now our home. As I aimed my helmet lights around, I took note of the smooth walls that surrounded us.

I spoke. "Uh, Duane. Do those walls look a bit unnatural to you?"

Duane replied, "Not as unnatural as those tracks down below, Sir. I would say we crashed through into someone's tunnel. I can't imagine they are going to be too happy about that, Sir."

I replied, "I don't imagine they will. I think we grab our blasters, top off our air, and see if we can find a way out before anyone shows."

Duane stepped back towards the cab. "I will do you one better, Sir. I'm going to set everything to ‘automated’ so it looks like no one was on her. We'll take all the rations with us. That way, if it's hostiles that own these tracks, they might not look very hard for us."

We emptied the cab of the harvester of all evidence that suggested the craft had been piloted. Duane worked on the flight logs, destroying evidence of where we had come from and of any living being having been aboard at the time of the crash. We soon found ourselves wandering down the dark tracks of the tunnel, our helmet lights illuminating all that we could see.

As we walked along, Duane ran a diagnostic on the tunnel's atmosphere. "Air looks thin, Sir, but breathable if the density picks up. I would guess most of it has rushed up through that hole we made. That would mean these tracks would have terminations or safety doors nearby."

I replied, "Safety doors?"

Duane stopped and slung a duffel bag of Human evidence over his shoulder.

He then continued, "Safety door, you know; if you have a long tunnel, you don't want a single point of failure to shut the whole thing down."

I replied, "Air locks?"

Duane chuckled, "Yes, Sir. Air locks. Sorry about that. I've been calling them safety doors since I was a kid. Bad habit."

As we reached a distance of several hundred meters away from the harvester, I looked back over my shoulder. As the image faded into black, it was suddenly silhouetted by a light coming from the other direction. The light grew in intensity as we began to run down the eight-meter-wide tracks.

I reached and grabbed Duane by the shoulder. "Over here! There's some kind of a control box we can lie behind!"

I tossed the duffel I was carrying against the wall behind the control box. Duane followed suit, and we both hit the rock floor at the same time.

The wide tunnel-maintenance vehicle came to a stop in front of the damaged harvester. It sat for several minutes as the crew scanned the wreckage. The Beast was soon crawling with maintenance workers. They were bipeds, as were most of the sentient beings we had encountered throughout our travels. It seemed that those with a similar build to Humans had evolved.

The yellow, bumpy, leatherlike skin of the alien workers told of a hard existence. Additional work-lights were set up, and the harvester was soon doused in bright white light. Strange bold lettering was visible on the front of the alien vehicle.

I spoke. "Duane, has your translator picked anything up from that lettering?"

Duane replied, "Only a partial. It's broken into three words. The second word is ‘Mines.’"

I replied, "I've got that along with the first one. Looks like ‘Emory’ or ‘Embry.’ It doesn't have a lock yet. Wait, the last word is filling in... ‘Embry Mines’ and then below that, ‘Colossus.’ Looks like we gummed up someone’s mining operation."

Duane began to reply and then stopped short. The maintenance workers all began to scatter and step away from the harvester as a new vehicle approached from behind. Wide doors that ran the length of the vehicle opened, and armed soldiers jumped out onto the tunnel floor. Our translators soon began to fill in bits and pieces of their comm transmissions.

"... fall... tracks... air..."

The lead soldier stepped up to the closest worker. He was nearly twice their height. The gear he was wearing had a gold stripe on the shoulder of an otherwise sand-colored hard-cased battle suit.

Commander Og spoke as the translator locked at 93 percent. "Who is the foreman?"

A worker quickly ran up to the soldier and knelt. "First Foreman Riekef, Sir."

Commander Og continued in a thundering voice with a harsh tone, "What is this that impedes progress at my mine?"

Riekef replied, "We do not know, Sir. It does not appear to be Colossus."

Og stepped forward, nearly trampling Riekef where he knelt, his voice booming over the comm. "Who dares trespass on a Colossus world?"

Og's comm immediately scrambled as he switched channels. I slumped back behind the control box and pulled Duane down with me.

I spoke. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Duane."

Duane replied, "Kansas, Sir?"

I sighed and continued, "Never mind. It's an old reference from the Grid archives. I need to stop using those, as they aren't quite as popular as I remember."

A rumbling could be heard as a second team with military-style uniforms pulled up in a vehicle behind the soldiers. The same thin breather packs as the workers wore were evident on their chests. From the blue stripe on their uniform shoulders, I took a guess that they were the equivalent of our SCore agents.

I slumped back down as the agents began to crawl onto the harvester. "Duane."

Duane replied, "Yes, Sir?"

I continued as I looked down the tracks into the blackness of the tunnel beyond our position, "Looks like we may be here for a while."

The tunnel maintenance workers continued to converse over their normal RF channel. Our auto-interpreter’s translation confidence had risen to 96 percent. Workers scurried about, doing the bidding of the intel taskmasters that remained behind. The hole in the tunnel ceiling that we had plunged through was being systematically closed and sealed. After several hours of inactivity, the soldiers in the train car departed while leaving two of their guards behind.

I spoke. "Keep your head down. One of those guards is coming this way. I would really rather not get captured at this point, but I think our hiding for this amount of time has taken the option of a friendly introduction away from us. We are invaders, and our hiding says we are up to no good."

Duane replied, "So we blast him once we have a clean shot? That leaves one more to deal with, and we don’t even know what kind of weapons they have."

I flipped the setting on my blaster to max. "Just be ready. If I give the command, I want you to take your best aim at that other guard. Between the two of us, maybe we can get in a lucky shot."

Duane replied, "You don’t seem to be brimming with confidence in your plan, Mr. Grange. My question is, what do we do after that?"

I looked at Duane and then back at the approaching guard. "We run like there is no tomorrow. I don’t know what we will find further down that tunnel, but I don’t think we have much of a choice. One thing I am encouraged by, though, is that their comm systems appear to be standard RF. If the rest of their technology is of a similar level, these battle suits and blasters may be all we need to take over this planet. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?"

Duane replied, "A hoot, Sir? I don’t follow."

My finger curled tighter on the trigger of my blaster as the guard approached. At twenty meters from our position, he came to a stop. The bright spotlight on his helmet illuminated the otherwise dark tunnel beyond our cover. After nearly a minute of standing and staring down the tunnel, the soldier turned and casually walked back towards the harvester wreckage.

I breathed a sigh of relief. "That was a bit too close."

Duane replied, "Wow. He must have been three meters tall. You are a sizable fella, Mr. Grange, but that guard would tower over you. Let’s hope we never have to go hand to hand with one."

Duane continued, "And another thing, Sir. Have you noticed that we can tap into their comm, but they have not detected ours? If we can figure out how to exploit that, it could give us a big advantage."

I replied, "Yeah, I picked up on that after we initially started blabbering and didn’t get caught. We are playing in someone else’s territory, Duane. We have to watch it, or those simple things are going to trip us up. And from seeing the size of those guards up close, I would say we don’t want to be tripping in front of ’em."

The guard returned to his previous position by the wreckage, his attention placed on the other guard. I took our close encounter as a sign that it was time for us to go. I made the decision, and we were soon crawling on our bellies into the darkness of the tunnel beyond.

I spoke as we crawled. "Range finder says we have about six hundred meters to go before we are around that bend. If we can make that without being spotted, we should be able to stand up. We will just have to stay on infrared with no lighting for a while. Any attention would be unwelcome attention."

The corner was soon reached. It felt good to stand and stretch out. As we walked we continued to converse.

Duane spoke. "What if we run into more of those giants in this direction?"

I put my hand on Duane’s shoulder. "I think we have the option of surrender back if we decide upon that. Back there, we were hiding; would have looked suspicious. Out here, after a little time passes, we are just walking away from the wreckage in an attempt to find help."

As we continued our walk, Duane pulled out his blaster and began to fumble with it.

I looked over with a confused gaze and spoke. "Something wrong? You have fired a blaster before, haven’t you?"

Duane replied, "Yes, Sir. I am familiar with them. I’m just curious as to how the negative ion switch works. Not the switch itself, but the negative bolt."

I replied as I pulled my weapon for an inspection, "Negative what?"

Duane replied, "The blasters they gave us, Sir—they have a negative mode. I was just wondering what would happen differently when they’re fired."

I looked at my blaster. There on the left side was a small, inconspicuous switch. The Colonel had seen to it that the Durian weapon technology we had captured during our fights had been added to our blasters.

Duane continued, "The techs said we could switch modes if needed, but I never got a chance to ask what the difference would be."

I replied, "The difference is only relevant if they are using ion technology. If they are on positive ions like the rest of the galaxy seems to be, these blasters could be highly effective against any weapons and shielding they may have. If, on the other hand, they don’t use ion tech for their shields or suits, well, I guess the switch wouldn’t make much of a difference."

Duane spoke. "The weapons they were carrying didn’t look anything like our blasters, Sir. I’m not entirely sure what to make of those big coils. And those packs on their battle-suit backs look like they’re tethered to them. It’s probably a high-energy weapon of some sort. I would like to get ahold of one of those to find out."

I replied, "Let’s hope we don’t find out and leave it at that. Hey, check your air stats. It looks like pressure is coming up. They must have sealed that hole."

We continued our walk for nearly twenty minutes before a vibration could be felt coming from the tracks. Seconds later, a wind began to build. It became difficult to stand. A light soon began to appear from behind us.

I spoke. "Get over there against the wall and just lie down! These hybrid suits are similar in color to that wall material. Let’s hope we get lucky and they just pass us by!"

We struggled to make it to the near wall as the wind howled and continued to build. The lights quickly approached. As we lay against the tunnel wall, we were soon engulfed by a wind like I had never felt. It took every ounce of energy to cling to the featureless stone walls of the tunnel. The maintenance car soon thundered past, with the remains of our harvester on a flat car behind it. Seconds later, the winds died and the tunnel was once again pitch black.

I spoke. "We need to get out of this tunnel, Duane. I was real close to being blown up and away. I’m sure these battle suits the Colonel gave us are something special, but I would rather not find out how special by being tossed around at a hundred kilometers per hour. Plus, we need to find that harvester. It has Human technology on there that we don't want to give away."

Duane replied, "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Sir. That harvester should light up in about an hour. She'll burn hot. There won't be much left by the time they get her put out. We just had the destructs added about five years ago. Didn't think we would ever use 'em."

As we continued our walk, a faint glow could be seen coming from around the next bend. We approached cautiously.

I spoke. "It looks like a guard post or something. Look just beyond the light. You can see one of those air lock doors is slid back into the tunnel wall. Since a light is on in the room, I would guess there is someone in there."

The light shone from a single window in the tunnel wall. We moved slowly up to it in an attempt to peek inward. As I gazed into the room, a single worker sat at a terminal. He sat motionless as if in a daze. The screen in front of him showed various readings related to the giant tunnel air lock door beside us. Of higher interest was an electronic diagram of the tunnel on the wall over his head.

I spoke. "Duane, you see that diagram?"

Duane replied, "Yes, Sir."

I continued, "That blue line through the tunnel is this door. I’m guessing that red X is where we fell through with the harvester and that other blue line is the other air lock for this section of the tunnel. Now look all the way to the left and all the way to the right. The mines are on the right end, and it looks like some type of city is on the left."

Duane replied, "The right says Embry 12 and the left Embry Central. I don’t see anything that says ‘city.’"

I replied, "I’m guessing, of course, but that train was heading to Embry Central. I don’t know why they would take the wreckage to the mines. Embry 12 sounds like a mine. They were taking the harvester back to whatever Embry Central is."

Duane touched my shoulder. "Ah, Sir. I think we need to move. If that yellow dash heading to Embry Central is the harvester, then we have another train approaching from Embry 12. I would say we have two minutes to find a place to hide."

The smooth tunnel offered little cover from the soon-to-be thundering winds. Duane jammed himself into a small indentation in the wall beside the control-room office. I had only one option. I squatted against the office door and held on for dear life to the handle. The train was soon upon us. The wind built steadily at first, and then, as the train rounded the bend, the wind speed rose with a ferocity that was well beyond our previous experience.

The train itself nearly filled the tunnel, almost brushing the smooth walls. As it rumbled past, less than a meter of space separated us from certain death. I was soon flying vertically, with the office door handle being the only thing that kept me in place. The train thundered past for nearly a minute as car after car of ore was being hauled towards Embry Central.

When the last car passed, the fierce wind began to settle and my feet were returned to their rightful place on the ground. I clutched the door handle tightly until the last of the wind had died out. I looked forward as I released my grip. The blood slowly returned to my hands. Duane emerged from his hiding place as I rose up again to peer into the office window. The control-room worker was staring me in the face. His expression was one of shock.

I turned the handle on the door and pulled my blaster from its holster.

Using the translator built into my helmet computer, I spoke. "Give me your name and identification!"

The worker hesitated for only a moment before pointing to the obvious badge on his smock. I reached out and snatched it from his chest.

I continued, "It says your name is Feldew Hoffis."

I glared at the badge and again at his face. "Who would name someone such a name! What are you hiding from us?"

Feldew Hoffis stuttered, "Uh, ah, uh, yes. I mean no, I am not hiding anything. Uh, are you from the wreckage?"

I raised the blaster and again glared as I spoke. "What do you know of the wreckage? Are you hiding invaders here in your office? Duane! Search that other room!"

Feldew looked around and again replied with a shaky voice, "I only know of the wreck because the air lock closed. I saw the maintenance train go by with a strange-looking machine on the flat car. What was that?"

I forced Feldew back into his chair and began to question him. He answered my questions freely. He was of the local population called the Grell; the planet was named Ponik. He found my questions odd but continued to answer. According to him, the Colossus had brutally ruled his home and his people for centuries.

I spoke with the tone of an inquisitor, keeping up my angered face. "These Colossus. Are they from a nearby planet? Do they look like you?"

Again Feldew looked confused. "I don't understand your question. Are you attempting to trick me into saying something harsh about the Masters? I am a good citizen. I follow all the laws!"

I replied, "Yes, Feldew Hoffis. I am aware of your legal status. But I have a knack for sniffing out suspicious behavior, and you reek of suspicion!"

When Feldew began to reply, I held up my hand. "No more questions from you. Are you familiar with the uniforms with the blue stripe on the shoulder?"

Feldew replied, "Yes. They are the Frexa. They are like the investigators of anything unusual for the Colossus. Are you... are you with the Frexa?"

I leaned in as I spoke quietly. "We are the Defiants; we investigate the Frexa!"

Feldew moved back in his chair as his eyes widened. I wondered how far I could take Feldew before he began to wise up. We were suddenly interrupted by a call over his radio.

A voice spoke. "Hoffis? Are you OK? The monitor shows that your door has been open for several minutes."

Hoffis looked at me for direction as Duane closed the open door. "Reply that you were just getting fresh air or something similar. If you in any way reveal our presence, you will pay dearly for that move."

Feldew Hoffis slowly turned and keyed his mic. "I am OK, Saffi. I sometimes like the smell of freshly mined Gunta ore. A full train just passed by."

The radio was quiet for a moment. "Feldew... you are a strange one. Gunta ore... hahahahaha!"

Feldew replied, "Thank you for your concern, Saffi. I shall see you after the shift."

Saffi replied, "Late as usual, I suppose."

A third voice then came over the radio. "Cut the chatter. The airwaves are for official use only. If I hear such conversations again, you will both be reported."

Two "yes, sirs" could be heard, followed by silence. Feldew turned back towards me.

I continued, "What do you know of the Colossus weapons?"

Again Feldew looked confused as he replied, "They are pulsers."

I again leaned in. "Explain to me your interpretation of a pulser. How does it work? What does it do?"

Feldew hesitated and then responded, "I have only heard stories, Sir, but I believe it fires what they call a condensed gravity pulse. When it strikes, it rapidly expands and then contracts before disappearing. I have not seen it used, but I have heard that you would be ripped apart if you were struck."

I continued, "And what of the sand-colored suits the soldiers are wearing? What is your knowledge of those?"

Feldew replied, "They are combat suits, Sir. We are not allowed to discuss them or the weapons. I should not have spoken about the pulser, should I? Oh, I knew this would be a bad day when that air lock closed. My father always said it would bring nothing but trouble."