The Lost Voyager: A Space Opera Novel (19 page)

Felix led the group back to the docking bay. Mach knew that with the sun dipping in the darkening sky, they had to move immediately to take advantage of the fading natural light outside.
 

The old officer swung open a heavy metal locker door grabbed a box full of graphite colored spherical objects. “Load your compartments with as many as you can. Trust me, we’ll be needing them.”
 

Mach picked up one of the tiny balls and rolled it between his fingers. “Are they some kind of mini bomb?”

“Transceivers calibrated to our local network. With the phane interference, we can only keep comms going by creating temporary grid systems to boost the signal. By tomorrow morning they’ll have traced every transceiver and destroyed them.”

Sanchez grunted down, scooped up a handful and dropped them into his left thigh compartment. Mach considered asking a final time if he was really up to their mission but decided against it. The big hunter deserved to out with a bang. Better to complete a final mission or die fighting for what was right, instead of quietly on his bunk in the
Intrepid
at the hands of a parasite.
 

They all loaded their spare compartments with transceivers and inspected personal weapons. Mach noticed the modified dark blue Scimitar parked in a gloomy corner of the bay. These were used as a common ground vehicle for moving troops around a planet’s surface for the CWDF forty years ago. The solid looking, rectangular tracked APC had an oversized laser cannon mounted on its roof and four double barreled muzzles of old school Fides Prime heavy machine guns aiming out of each corner.
 

“Impressive job,” Mach said to Felix and nodded in the direction of the Scimitar. “How much ammo have we got?”

“Enough to hold off a thousand of those damned things. Are you ready?”

Sanchez tapped the stock of his rifle. “Ready as we’ll ever be.”

Adira had already moved over the APC and walked around its perimeter, staring at the weapons. She sported what Mach thought of as her kill face: focused and determined, assessing every element of their capabilities.
 

“There’s viewscreens in the back, synced with the sights,” Felix said. “I suggest two of you take the rear. One ride shotgun with me and take the front right.”

“That’ll be me,” Mach said. “I need to pinpoint a few potential escape routes in case you’re not outside after we arm the weapon.”

Felix smiled although his eyes betrayed an opposite emotion. He slid the Scimitar’s remote control out of his pocket and thumbed the pad. A square door along the side of the vehicle groaned out and hummed to the left. A set of five black steps folded out and thumped against the concrete.
 

Mach clambered in, turned right and toward the front cabin. This version of Scimitar became known as
the mobile coffin
after the horans developed powerful armor piercing ground misses near the end of the war. Most were swapped out, but it wasn’t uncommon for some to be used on frontier planets as admin vehicles.
 

Felix sat behind the driver’s controls. The dashboard lit up in an array of prime colors, and the engine roared into life. Adira and Sanchez took up positions on two stools at the end of each troop bench, and activated the screens showing views of the docking bay with crosshairs in the middle of each image.
 

Sanchez twisted on his stool and the feed scanned around, following his movement. “Nice work, Felix,” he said.
 

“I’m not just a pretty face,” Felix said without a hint of emotion. “I cobbled together what I could from the bunker. We needed to stay alive until somebody got here.”

The APC’s four circular headlights flicked on, firing white beams of light against the blast door. Mach hated himself for thinking it, but with Sanchez on his way out, he wondered if he hadn’t just found a perfect replacement. If they made it out of the mines in one piece and escaped, Mach decided to offer Felix a place on the
Intrepid
.
 

An electronic whine came through the speaker. The thick blast doors smoothly parted, revealing the dimly lit ramp outside. Felix wrapped his gloves around two silver levers and eased them forward. The Scimitar jerked and settled to a consistent speed, its tracks grinding up the ramp.
 

The bottom half of Noven Alpha’s orange sun had already dipped below the horizon. Mach gazed out of the reinforced glass screen, searching for signs of movement in the gloomy undergrowth.
 

Felix directed the Scimitar toward a track that cut straight through the forest toward the distant mountains.

***

After twenty minutes rumbling toward the mines, Mach spotted the first signs of movement between the trees that hugged either side of the dusty trail. A dark shadow weaved between the trees, keeping pace with the APC. He grabbed the front gun controls and focused the crosshairs, hoping for a clean shot.
 

“Conserve your ammo until we hit the open ground in front of the mountains,” Felix said. “That’s when we’ll need it.”

“Have you spotted any patterns to the phane’s behavior?” Adira asked.
 

“If you’re on foot, they attack immediately in numbers. Since I’ve been coming out in this little baby, and gave them some laser treatment, they’re more cautious and stalk, waiting for a moment of weakness.”

Sanchez spun on stool, panning his screen across the forest. “We’ve got company on both sides. How long till we hit open ground?”

“Two minutes. From there it’s a klick to the eastern entrance.”

Mach glanced into the clear darkening sky, half expecting to see the red glow platform engines approaching. The jagged mountains rose in front of them and the track widened ahead.
 

Plants, vines and trees suffocated a series of four buildings near the edge of the forest. They were the same design as the long rectangular CWDF barrack blocks: quickly assembled, not designed for comfort, and were probably used to accommodate workers. Rust caked the line of bolts holding each section together and mold spattered every filthy window. Three faded blue vehicles decayed in an overgrown space in front of the blocks.
 

“I searched that place for supplies,” Felix said. “Found nothing apart from rotting mattresses on bedframes and thousands of smashed egg shells.”

“That’s becoming a recurring theme,” Mach replied, thinking about what he witnessed in the quarry and crevice. “Can you tell us anything else about the mines?”

“It’s part natural, part drilled. The map’s accurate and you won’t have a problem finding the bomb. Luminous stalactites provide limited visibility in some of the larger chambers. I can’t give you an accurate prediction on the level of infestation. The only thing I can tell you is the phane have exploded in numbers over the last few days.”

“What about the mothership?” Adira asked. “It’s hard to believe they don’t have more tech on the ground.”

Felix shook his head. “They send out the platforms and have craft in the air above the main ship. The way I see it, the phane just take what they want. If you get in the way, they’ll attack.”

The forest thinned to a barren stretch of land, littered with huge boulders and small shrubs. The track ahead snaked toward a black square entrance, cut into the bottom of the mountain’s almost vertical dark brown face.
 

“Holy shit!” Sanchez said.
 

Mach looked to his left. Hundreds of dark arachnid figures broke from the tree line. He glanced in the opposite direction. Hundreds more scuttled across the opposite side of the wasteland. Both groups of arachnid phane soldiers fanned out into an extended line, covering both sides of the Scimitar.
 

Felix thrust the two levers forward and accelerated. “I’ve dealt with this before. Relax guys,” he said.
 

“Relax?” Sanchez asked. “I hunt to relax, not the opposite.”

Dust puffed out from either the Scimitar as it ground over the dusty track, increasing the lack of visibility around the vehicle in the fading light. Mach’s heart thumped against his chest. He remembered how much force it took to kill one of the large arachnids. The hundreds closing in were equal in size.
 

“What’s your plan, Felix?” Adira asked with urgency in her voice. “I hope you’re not thinking of going directly to the mine entrance and opening the door.”

“There’s an open space ahead. We wait there for the phane to close in and hit them with all we’ve got. The laser will slice through at least four ranks. They need to be close for the machine guns to be effective too.”

Mach frowned. “So we sit there and let them surround us?”

“Pretty much, and hope they lose their appetite.”

Felix directed the APC off the track and crashed over small rocks away from the larger boulders. He slowed the Scimitar to a screeching halt roughly half way between the mine’s entrance and the forest.
 

A gentle breeze blew across the wasteland, clearing the dust. Hundreds of phane arachnids had turned to a couple of thousand. They circled the vehicle at a distance of a hundred meters and slowly moved forward on their for back legs.
 

Mach swept his crosshairs across the creatures on the right hand side of the APC. Their ranks swelled deeper as they closed in for the kill.
 

Felix activated the laser controls for the oversized cannon on the roof. “I’ve got four three-hundred-and-sixty degree bursts before it runs out of juice.”

“You can swivel fire that thing?” Mach asked.
 

“I configured it for an extended shot. Think of it like cracking a graphene whip across a group of melons. You concentrate on any phanes who avoid it.”

“Nice thinking,” Sanchez said. “It’s a shame we’ll never get a chance to exchange notes.”

Felix sighed. “You never know how things work out.”
 

The phane soldiers in front of the reinforced windshield looked far too close for comfort, but Mach remembered the magnifying effect the glass produced. Their orange beady eyes glowed in the gloom and they collectively raised their pincers.
 

A bead of sweat ran down Mach’s temple. He turned to look at Adira who returned a nervous glance before focusing back on her viewscreen.
 

“They’ll charge any second,” Felix said. “Prepare to fire.”

The overhead laser whined around on its turret. Mach thumbed the fire button of his machine gun. The phane paused.

“They’re too close,” Sanchez said.

“Follow my lead,” Felix replied. “Timing’s everything.”

An ear-splitting screech blasted from speaker. The arachnids sprang forward and reached within a couple of seconds of the Scimitar. Felix fired the laser. Its red beam swept around the surrounding the vehicle in a heartbeat, brightening the area, and slicing through the front ranks.
 

Phane soldiers collapsed to the ground. Adira and Sanchez’s guns rattled from the rear of the cabin. Mach focused on his screen and fired at any signs of movement amongst the tangled bodies and twitching legs. He fixed his crosshairs on a smaller soldier and fired repeatedly at its head, checking its stride until it crumpled.
 

The soldiers behind the immediate slaughter froze for a moment. Mach guessed the team must’ve taken out a quarter of the force. He sprayed the tightly packed arachnids with an automatic burst. Tracer rounds had been loaded every tenth round and zipped through the air in pink streaks, each one slamming into the throng.

“Wait ‘til I’ve fired the laser again,” Felix shouted. “That’s the optimum range for these fuckers.”

“They’re coming again,” Adira shouted.

A second wave ran the Scimitar in the last remnants of natural light. Mach noticed over the heads of the charging arachnids that some were heading back toward the forest.
 

Felix waited until the wave drew level the pile of corpses scattered the Scimitar and fired the top mounted laser again. In Mach’s peripheral vision, the beam flashed across the front of the reinforced window, cutting down the closest soldiers and maiming ones further behind.
 

Mach focused on his viewscreen and peppered two phanes who both attempted to climb over the increasingly large pile of their own dead. Sanchez roared insults from the back of the APC as his gun constantly rattled.
 

“Hold your fire,” Felix said.
 

A screech rang through the speaker again. The remaining phane soldiers, scattered on the outskirts of the dead and wondered, turned in unison and scuttled back toward the cover of the canopy.
 

“My ammo reading’s less than half,” Adira said.

Sanchez grunted. “I’m almost out.”

Felix repositioned himself at the controls. “They’ll be coming back. I’ll drop you at the entrance and draw them away.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Mach asked.
 

“They usually regroup and get reinforced. I’ll leave you behind a pile of rocks by the entrance and draw them to another part of the mountain. Our priority is getting you to the bomb. It won’t happen if thousands of phane are chasing you in toward God knows what.”
 

“You can’t handle all the weapons on your own,” Sanchez said. “I’ll stay with you.”

“I’ve got a feeling all three of you will be needed in the mines. I’ll be okay. I made it this far.”

Mach nodded. He admired Felix’s cool actions and thinking under pressure, and the plan made sense. The older man would be an excellent addition to the team.
 

Felix thrust the Scimitar forward. It bashed phane bodies out of the way, crunched over others, and broke free into clear wasteland. He accelerated and headed directly for the gloomy entrance.
 

“They’re back in the forest,” Adira said. “I can’t see any in open ground.”

“They’ll be watching,” Felix replied. “Make sure you jump straight out when I say. We need to create the impression of circling and heading in new direction.”