Beyond the Shroud of the Universe (9 page)

Calvin tried to cover a smile as he looked over the tops of the nearby buildings. Smoke rose from several places, and the only sounds of combat he could hear were his soldiers’ weapons.

Nightsong saw the smile. “Taking this facility is not a great accomplishment,” he noted with a shrug. “The troops here are poorly armed and armored compared with your forces. The Efreet might have been ready if they had another year to prepare.” He pulled back on the stick, and the silver ship rose quickly from the courtyard.

“Still…” he added after a couple of seconds, “there are probably a few surprises they haven’t found yet.”

Master Chief watched as the silver ship climbed rapidly into the sky and disappeared. “I’m getting really fucking tired of watching that ship fly away,” he said. “I can’t wait to find out who’s inside it…and then kick the living shit out of him or her.”

He turned back to the LCAC. “All right, let’s get a move on. They ain’t paying us by the hour.” He stepped back to allow the two cyborgs to sidestep down the front ramp of the craft holding a large box between them. “That goes to the big warehouse.”

“You got it, Master Chief,” the cyborg on the right, Sergeant Jacob ‘Chaos’ Braig, said.

“What
is
this thing, anyway?” the cyborg on the left, Sergeant Pierce ‘Big Sky’ Tomas, asked.

“There are two silver thermite bombs inside,” Lieutenant Bradford said. He walked behind the cyborgs, staring at the box like it was a long-lost love.

“Sounds nasty,” Big Sky said. “I’ve always been a fan of thermite, white phosphorous…things like that. ‘Cept if the enemy’s shooting them at you, in which case it ain’t quite so cool.”

“Oh, these bombs are cool, all right, although the thermite really isn’t anything more than a dispersal mechanism for the silver,” Lieutenant Bradford replied. He smiled. “It’s way cooler than any of those other things.”

“Why’s that?” Chaos asked.

“Silver isn’t stable in this universe, so when the bomb goes off, the silver will start energetically decaying, making it
much
worse than burning magnesium or Willie Pete. Think about how hard it is to put out those two substances once they are burning. Carbon dioxide extinguishers don’t faze them because they make their own oxygen. Water doesn’t do anything, either, except maybe remove a little of the heat and spread them around some. Meanwhile, this is a
nuclear
reaction, and the hose teams will be dying from the radiation it’s putting off.”

“That’s coooooool,” the two cyborgs chorused.

“Even better, the thermite/silver mixture is going to spread and burn through anything it touches. Then it’s going to spread and burn through the next level. If we can get it to the top of the building, nothing is going to stop it from burning all the way down to the lowest basement. There’s enough mass here to take care of this building several times over.”

“These little bombs are going to destroy the whole building?” Chaos asked.

Lieutenant Bradford nodded. “These bombs are going to create a substance that’s unlike anything this universe has ever seen before. It’s like…I don’t know, it’s like perpetual lava. It will burn through anything it touches. It’s kind of like the corium you would get if a nuclear reactor melted down, but that reaction only uses the heat from nuclear decay; this will have its own source of new thermal energy.”

“What’s corium?” Big Sky asked.

“Liquefied nuclear fuel. Nasty stuff.”

“All you knuckleheads need to know,” Master Chief said, stepping in between the troopers and the lieutenant, “is that it’s a big box of shut the hell up and focus on what you’re supposed to be doing. Like the lieutenant said, the stuff inside that box reacts badly with this universe, so don’t drop it and
definitely
don’t open it before it’s time. It’s amazing the damn thing didn’t go off when we parachuted in here.”

As the cyborgs continued their march toward the plant, Master Chief realized with a start the Efreet had stopped attacking, and it made him decidedly uncomfortable. An enemy that stopped attacking blindly was an enemy who was planning something…and he really wasn’t in a mood to find out what.

He advanced with First Squad to the warehouse, with the cyborgs bringing up the rear. The building was immense, and he wondered how the Efreet had built it. They must have had help, he decided, probably from the Iranians. Bastards.

The building was almost 200 feet wide on the end he approached and over 500 feet in length. The side of the building had a large, central door that would have accommodated a dump truck, as well as people-sized doors on either side. “
Fire Teams One and Two on the left door and Fire Team Three on the right,
” he ordered.
“
Cyborgs in front. Take no chances, but be careful with your explosives. I don’t want anyone fragging us because they forgot to dial their tridents back from the initial assault. Everyone got that?
” He looked around and could see heads nodding through the visors of the troopers facing him.

“
All right, we go on three. One... Two…
”

“Here’s where it gets fun,” Jamming said as he watched the tractor holding the shuttle’s broken stealth module drive away. “Don’t know why the damn thing picked
now
to die.”

“Nah,” Canuck said. “This run shouldn’t be a problem, even without the stealth. We race down, pick up the troops and get back up here before the destroyer can attack us. Nothing could be easier.”

“Unless the destroyer’s moved.”

“Yeah, unless it’s moved.” The lineman signaled the tractor and all personnel were clear, “Here we go.” He lifted the shuttle from the
Spark’s
deck and flew into space. As he cleared the stealth field of the
Spark
, he turned toward the planet and accelerated to full power.

“Shit,” Jamming said. “It’s moved.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Admiral Wright’s aide said, after a quick knock on the door. Admiral Wright could see the aide was out of breath.

“Yes?” Admiral Wright asked.

“You asked to be made aware of…immediately…any geopolitical events…that were out of the ordinary,” the lieutenant replied, gasping for air; “we just got word that a…nuclear bomb exploded…about 15 miles southwest of Shiraz, Iran. The information…still pretty sketchy, but it looks like…it looks like it was a big one, sir…Somewhere on the order of 400 kilotons.”

“Thank you, lieutenant, that will be all,” Admiral Wright said with a smile. His smile faded into the grin of a predator as he switched to his comm system. “
Captain Griffin, you’re up.
”

“Look who we found,” Staff Sergeant Park ‘Wraith’ Ji-woo said as she prodded her captive forward with the muzzle of her weapon.

“Yeah, I found him hiding like a sissy under a desk in the admin building,” Corporal Calvin ‘Bossman’ Davis said.

“Nice,” Night replied, looking into the eyes of the Iranian who had threatened the General Assembly, and who had been responsible for the bombing of Tashkent. He was still wearing the traditional robe and headdress, but now had on a ceremonial orange cloak over the robe, which probably meant he was a politician of some sort. Night hated politicians, maybe even more than terrorists. “I knew we’d meet again.”

“I am not afraid of you,” the man said.

“Even though you were hiding under a desk?” asked Bossman. “Yeah, you’re pretty brave, all right.”

“All of you infidels will die!” the man yelled. He pulled a ceremonial dagger out of his robe and charged Night, but only made it two steps before the lasers of Night, Wraith and Bossman dropped his smoking corpse to the ground.

“I’m sure I’ll die someday,” Night said, flipping the man over with the toe of his boot. “However, it won’t be today.”

“Captain Train!” a voice called from the LCAC.

“Here,” he said. He looked up to find a woman in a flight suit coming down the ramp. The woman carried an M-16, scanning the compound for threats as she crossed the ground between them. Night approved. Not bad for a swabbie.

“I’m Petty Officer Klemarczyk,” she said as she reached Night. “The craftmaster asked me to come out and tell you we’ve got a problem with the boat.”

“
Three!
”

Shoulders down, Corporal Robert ‘Fury’ Scott and Big Sky crashed through the two doors, tearing them off their hinges and sending them spinning to the side. As they brought their weapons up, the combat robots waiting for them began firing.

“Ziiiiiip-PEW!” “Ziiiiiip-PEW!” “Ziiiiiip-PEW!”

Five robots waited in a firing line, along with a large number of Efreet on both sides armed with crew-served flechette throwers.

The second person through the left door, Master Chief was familiar with the robots. Although he hadn’t fought them personally, the platoon had, and he knew their capabilities. He dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the three centimeter laser bolt that passed through where he had been. “
Keep moving!
” he ordered. “
They don’t anticipate movement. We’ve got to get behind them!
”

All the Terrans could see of the Efreeti combat robots were the thick, rounded shields that protected the seven-foot-tall machines behind them. The robots fired through small slits in their shields, while the shields shed the return fire from the Terrans like rain.

The troopers pouring into the building ran into a firestorm as the robots fired bolt after bolt, and Corporals Donald Drake and Brenton Davis were felled on entry, three-centimeter holes burned through their suits and chests. There was about a two-second lag between shots as the robots’ lasers charged, and the Terrans used it to disperse.

They looked for cover, but there wasn’t any to be had; the interior of the building was almost entirely open. A large metallic device sat on a six-inch high concrete platform in the center of the building, with nothing between the device and the troops except the robots and Efreet. Overhead, several levels of metal grid work extended throughout the building. The overhead levels appeared to be for storage, but there was very little actually being stored inside the building, and nothing at their end; there was no cover.

The cyborgs, Fury, Chaos and Big Sky, marched straight ahead at the robots, firing their heaviest weapons. Although able to withstand the majority of the fire with nothing more than melted proto-flesh, the cyborgs were also unable to break through the shields of the robots in return.

The Efreeti flechette throwers focused on the cyborgs, and all three were hit by numerous slivers of metal. One jammed in Fury’s knee joint, locking it up. The offending flechette crew received a return volley from Fury’s Mrowry autocannon, spreading most of their remains 50 feet behind their weapon.

As the Terrans continued to pour into the room, the balance of fire changed, especially as the tridents came into play. The Efreet were quickly eliminated, and two of the robots were put out of action by rounds that exploded immediately behind them.

Seeing the rest of the soldiers sprinting around behind the robots, the cyborgs continued a slow, straight-ahead advance, happy to receive the brunt of their fire while their teammates got into position to take the robots from behind. One of the robots tried to turn to follow the suited figures, but that exposed it to Big Sky’s chain gun, and it was wrecked.

Within 15 seconds, the Terrans were behind the robots, and the last two were destroyed, although not before one caught Corporal Rus ‘Overkill’ Rogers with a bolt through the head.

Master Chief surveyed the interior of the building, shaking his head at how quickly the Terrans had lost three men. He promised the dead that the Efreet and the Iranians would pay for this…starting with whoever was on the damn silver spaceship. With a sigh, he shrugged it off; there was nothing he could do about it now.

“
Fire Team Three,
” Master Chief commed, “
help Lieutenant Bradford position the bombs. The rest of you, get the dead and wounded out of here and back to the boat. Our evac should already be on its way, and you do
not
want to get left behind!
”