“What’s the situation, Sargent?” Captain Yang returned his salute as she crouched down with him behind the embankment.
“Enemy’s point defenses are still active at all points on the building previously reported, ma’am,” Lang said, sending her AI a ping to dump the relevant files. “We scouted around most of the old parking area and we think we can secure the plasma guns there.”
“Will that give us a good angle to take out their mag field generators?” Yang asked as she started scrolling through the data he’d just given her.
“Not unless these guns can arc plasma like kinetic shells,” Lang said. “But we can hit the main building from here.”
She paused mid scroll. “What does that accomplish? I’m not looking to cause a catastrophic containment breach of an active fusion reactor, Langley. That doesn’t help anyone.”
“Technically it does short out their planetary defense network in this region but I see you point, ma’am.” Lang twitched a few commands and sent his proposed plan to her tablet. “What’s interesting about the Earthling’s chosen weapons in this situation is how incredibly clunky they are. Nanotech, by nature, is about doing small things. Blowing them up to a large scale is very inefficient and the fact that they seriously took this approach to warfare shows how unaccustomed UNIGOV is to the whole process…”
“You’re not filing a flight plan, Sargent,” Yang said. “You don’t need to give me the specs and background on all the tech involved. Just give me the highlights.”
“You can’t use disassembler fields indoors, ma’am. They’ll just disassemble the building and you’ll be outdoors again, which isn’t ideal for a bunch of reasons, thus you don’t deploy any of the fields indoors. So if we want to avoid the plant’s defenses…”
“Blow open a wall in the main building and run inside.” Yang smiled. “Simple and direct, just like all the best plans. Have you determined the best places to breach the walls?”
“I wasn’t sure what your operational goals were so we made our best guess at the spots we thought would be near an emergency shutdown of some sort.” With a flick of the fingers Lang highlighted those spots on her map. “Unfortunately the plans for this kind of plant aren’t on hand and it didn’t exist before the Departure so all we’ve got are assumptions to go on.”
“Not much but it’s a start.” Yang looked the map over and added a few notes to it. “I’m going to check in with the other groups and see if we can get an angle on any other potential points to breach. Impressive work, Sargent. The Remote Operations Group think they’ve located the plant’s command room based on infrastructure on site. I’m adding that to the list of potential sites to breach and I want you to take point on that team.”
“Me, ma’am?”
“You’re the Earthling expert, remember?” Yang gave him a wry smile. “I know making peace isn’t exactly your specialty but you’re pretty good at thinking around their plans and you’ve got a handle on their temperament. Find and neuteralize their leadership. Offer them unconditional surrendure before you slag them, and let me know if they make any counter offers I’m not looking to wipe them out, but don’t be afraid to force the issue if they’re recalcitrant. I’ll send Priss along to keep you in touch, okay?”
“If you insist ma’am.” He pulled up the map on his own tablet. “Where are we making our entrance at?”
“You’ll be staging from upsilon-2, moving out in ten minutes. Stay on your toes, Sargent.”
Upsilon-2 was just behind a large cherry tree. Unlike most of the plant’s overgrown garden beds this tree stood on it’s own with no other obvious landscaping around it. Lang wondered if it was originally intended for that spot or if it had sprouted on its own. He’d hunkered down there with Priss and his picked up team of ground pounders just in time to see the opening salvo come from Fresh Face and his gun team.
In his long career with the Spacer Corps Lang had seen a lot of plasma bombardments. He’d seen the utter devastation left by the Minervans on Newton, the chilling spectacle of atmosphere venting from Minervan domes over Galileo and the heart stopping shock of the orbit ship Great Red Spot breaking apart under focused fire from the Dianan fleet. Each and every kind of bombardment was horrible in its own way. But after watching the Second Galilean War from the cockpits of landers and rescue craft in space Lang had figured he was used to the sight of plasma guns at work.
He’d forgotten that in atmosphere they also made noise.
When the guns blew up the first section of the plant’s outer walls there was just a brief flash of light from their emplacement in the parking lot, followed but a brighter, sharper flash and a huge plume of smoke from the building. Then a massive clap as super heated air rapidly cooled. Finally a bone shaking boom and a pressure wave that hit like a slap in the face. Lang sucked in a breath and shook himself once. That hadn’t even been a big strike, nothing compared to the kinds of shipboard plasma weapons and missiles the Tranquility could bring to bear.
Harry laughed. “I take it you’ve only done space work until now, Sarge?”
“If you don’t count escaping after being grounded in hostile territory twice, yeah.”
“Nothing like the first time you see a big heat gun in atmo,” Keys said. “Hopefully we won’t be down here long enough to get used to it.”
Priss crossed herself and said, “Amen to that.”
“Check you’re gear,” Lang said. “There’s one more team going then it’s our turn. I don’t think we’re going to get ripped up by nanotech once we’re inside but someone on team Earth has gotten creative and nasty so keep your eyes peeled and call out anything that looks off. If they surrender to you give them full privileges under the Borealis Convention.”
“Although be aware that they probably won’t reciprocate,” Priss added. “Most of them don’t know the Convention exists.”
“What if they want to negotiate terms?” Keys asked.
“Then I talk to them,” Lang said. “But Priss is right, they don’t have much cultural or structural support for these kinds of situations so you’re going to have to treat them a little differently.”
“How so?”
“It’s likely they haven’t disciplined themselves against violent impulses ever in their lives. If it looks like they’re about to hit you or shoot you with a weapon they’ve recovered or dump a load of nuclear waste on your head that’s probably exactly what’s about to happen.” Lang made sure to make direct eye contact with Keys as he spoke. “If you believe they’re about to attack you, shoot them. UNIGOV discourages all communication with us martians anyways, so negotiations are unlikely.”
Keys looked uncomfortable at that but he nodded. “Understood.”
A second blast shook the air and Fresh Face’s voice came over the comms. “Stand by, group Langley. We’re making your entrance now.”
“Final check in now,” Lang said.
“Keys here, exo is green, all gear checks out.”
“Yancey, EMGs are running, all other gear…”
The six of them piled over the super heated hole in the plant’s concrete wall and into another world. If the streets of Los Angeles were deserted and overgrown the halls of the plant were chaotic and full of death. Yang had picked a spot she thought was near the plant’s command center. They’d found the building’s cafeteria. The wall had blown in and thrown slagged concrete and burning insulation across tables and diners who had probably been enjoying breakfast moments before.
Or maybe they’d just been trying to choke down a few bites while wondering what all the alarms were about. Either way, they’d died just the same. Bits of people poked out from some of the rubble and dead or unconscious bodies were strewn against the far wall like leaves. His AI datafeed, projected on the inside of his helmet, estimated there had been two dozen people in the area. It marked three as still conscious and moving. None of them were carrying weapons.
Harry and Keys had already flagged them as low priority threats and were moving towards a stairway leading up over the dining area. Most of the stairs were intact although some rubble smashed a few steps. At the top a balcony overlooked the cafeteria and a sign hanging there announced that medical and reactor access were to the left, administration and reactor control to the right and personal lockers straight ahead. He took off after Keys.
The stairway proved sturdy enough to hold their weight in spite of the damage and, with assistance from the exoskeletons, they were able to jump the damaged sections without trouble. At the top Harry hesitated. “Do we trust this sign?”
“Why would they put up a sign with the wrong directions on it?” Yancey demanded.
“I dunno, maybe they expected they’d be invaded?”
Lang pushed past them and took point as he turned to the right. “In that case we’ll just double back the other way. But I doubt they’d just change the signs to confuse us, UNIGOV only reactivated this facility recently and their own people are just as likely to get confused by it.”
“If you say so, Sarge.”
Truthfully it wouldn’t have taken long to confirm the sign. Not more than ten or fifteen feet down the hallway a bank of windows looked out over a wide room full of tihn dividing walls, creating a grid of small, eight foot rooms with desks covered in dust. Lang guessed it was the administration room, now out of use. Another twenty feet on the hall ended. Just before the end there was a glass door into the administration room on the right and the hall itself ended in a metal door.
Harry slipped forward and tried the metal door, finding it unlocked. Yancey gave a thumbs up after checking his EMG scanner and then the two of them slipped into the room, guns up and moving in the arcane patterns of the trained infantryman. Lang followed along behind them when they gave the all clear. They found a locker room.
The locker room had achieved it’s final form long before space colonization efforts began so it was a pretty familiar place. Banks of lockers, banks of toilet stalls, individual shower cubbies and textured ceramic floors. The rubber soles on Lang’s boots gripped it well enough but those who’d stuck with mag boots slipped a bit as the smooth, metal soles slipped on the slick surface.
Progress slowed until they reached the end of the locker room and arrived at the next door. Once again Harry and Yancey went through first. This time the door swung shut behind them on its own and before anyone could grab the handle and pull it back open a deep thunk sounded as the door locked itself behind them.
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