Alien Mine Ch. 18

"Yaneta is down," corporal Wang reported, shifting his fire to cover another attack as the roaches tried to come at them from above.

"Cover her; she is injured but alive; someone will be there to pick her up," Rhys said calmly as if discussing the rain.

Wang moved in front of the prone woman, covering her with his body while continuing to fire.

"Watch your flanks," Sergeant Marek said as he put his rifle around the corner and sighted on a dark shape that was advancing. The Trangrod's movements had an unfamiliar rhythm, clearly alien, and its heavy weapon was swiveling from one of his soldier's cover positions to another. He fired a burst that hit it and saw it immediately swing his way with a speed that surprised him, and ducked back as rounds tore into the wall where he had been. "Grenades," he shouted, and the Trangrod disappeared as several grenades found it. Then there was more firing as the heavy weapons section and their drones flushed the remaining alien biomachines into the waiting fire lanes of the rifle squad. Finally, the heavy-caliber rounds from their rifles and the bird drones finished the rest.

Rhys had tried to draw Om away from Yaneta by making himself a target. Apparently, he had succeeded too well, briefly dodging gunfire ripping over his head and taking out the wall behind him. Time to move. He jumped to the left, finding and killing a Trangrod with rifle fire, then moved back to the right and further down the stairs. He wanted to get out of the stairwell, but it was at least made of cement, while the walls in the building offered no protection. Rhys feinted to the right, this time drawing it out but ducked back as gunfire tore into the cement wall. But the roach had moved just enough, and a bird drone transformed itself into an alien metal spear that drove itself through the body and into the floor underneath. Rhys finished it with a grenade. Return gunfire and explosions drove him further down, and he could see the trap forming. Several men rushed him from below, and he fired a grenade and then ignored them. His nanobytes would dispose of the parasites, but he grimaced as their piercing screams rang in his ears.

Rhys saw another Trangrod edging forward, and he quickly fired a hammering burst from his rifle. These rounds were lighter than the large battle rifle he was used to, and he had to be more precise with his aim, but the Trangrod was also good at protecting its vital areas. Rhys popped out and fired again on full auto and added a grenade. The Trangrod staggered while losing pieces, then exploded as he hit it with a second grenade. The explosion demolished the doorway and all of the glass on that floor. Then more fire cut past, but Rhys was already moving, and the bullets hit only walls.

"We are in position," Amancia said even though Rhys could see them on the tac-grid. Flush them, Rhys said, while at the same time, Thea dissolved the wall of the building behind him and flooded the stairwell with heavy tiger and bird drones from the shuttle. The Trangrods fought until they were all dead; there was no quarter given or asked in this war. Thea and her binary used the shuttle's weapons to kill everything that moved in his direction, and Leslie and Amancia took care of everything else.

Rhys could still hear the sound of auto-cannon and chain guns filling the stairway, and other armored figures bounded into the area near the stairs, searching for any remaining Trangrods. Unfortunately, whole sections of the stairway had collapsed, while the walls were broken and falling down. Part of the ceiling fell, just missing them as Yaneta was picked up and carried gently into the shuttle.

"How is she?" Sandy asked, her hair streaming out in all directions as she controlled every aspect of the ship.

"Four rounds, broken leg, perforated intestine; she will be fine in half an hour," Leslie replied.

"Good, get her in the med unit, then get her back in armor in time for the main event."

"Yes, Maam," Leslie said, her helmet folding back on itself.

Yaneta felt herself placed in a med unit and realized that was only the third time she had been glad to see Leslie.

"Any other casualties," she asked Rhys as he and the others came on board.

"Three, one serious, we caught them by surprise. Is Jack ready?"

"Yes, he is in position for the main attack; we will be there in thirty seconds," she said, taking the shuttle up and away from the collapsing building.              

"That was a lot of damage," Kiania said aloud, "so much for subterfuge. Blowing up buildings and leaving parts of alien machines across a neighborhood in Moscow makes quite a statement." Sirens screamed as police and fire engines raced to the buildings damaged in the fight.

"Yes," mused Rhys, "they seem to feel strong enough to come out in the open; I don't think that's a good sign. It seems the battle is entering a new phase. Still, they won't expect another attack, so let's flush them out and sanitize the nest.

***

General Vladislav woke to his phone ringing and someone pounding on his door. He reached for his phone while his wife quickly threw on a robe and went to the door. The general knew that nothing good ever happened in the middle of the night, but he wasn't prepared for what he heard. Another mechanical drone attack, but this time with pieces and partial remains. The reports were confusing, and information was still coming in, but it seemed there had been a battle in west-central Moscow. Drones of some kind (if that's what they were) had been involved, and several apartment buildings had been damaged. There were civilian casualties, especially in one building that was almost completely destroyed. The reports were confusing, some of them obviously impossible, but these drones were different from the ones that attacked the drug facility, and many of them had been destroyed by whatever they were fighting. Reports from the most heavily damaged building indicated armored soldiers had been involved in the fight, but no one knew where they came from or where they went.

Dressing rapidly, General Vladislav issued orders even as he was rushed out the door and into a car that would take him to headquarters. The first thing he did was to order the mobilization of the forces in Moscow and fighter cover over the city. The president's guards had been heavily reinforced, armed with heavy weapons. The General thought furiously as he sped to his command center, and reports continued to pour in. No one knew where the strange mechanical drones had come from, nor who they were attacking. Whoever it was had more success against them than his own men had. But even more worrying was that two groups were fighting in the middle of Moscow, and he didn't know who either of them were.

***

Yaneta washed her face and looked into the mirror, unsure what she expected to see. The reflection showed a woman who seemed calm, and strangely enough, it accurately reflected her current emotional state. Her mind replayed the events of the fight, but the memories held no terror; it was as though they happened to someone else. Leslie had told her the med units had healed her body, but it had also removed any trauma associated with the event. Yaneta checked the time and decided she could take a quick shower. She still had blood on her, some of it hers, but most of it was from the men who had tried to kill her. Some of those men had parasites, but others didn't. She wondered what kind of person would willingly work for those alien monsters. Yaneta felt no guilt about killing them; they deserved death. Drying herself, she pulled on the ballistic weave bodysuit that went under the armor. This time she would be in heavy armor, and her weapon would be several times more powerful than what she had just fought with. Yaneta smiled; this time, she would be the hunter.

***

The major gave the order to advance into the darkened entrance of the Om nest. Echo squad led the way down tiger drones well out in advance, then a two-man rifle section followed by the squad leader, Sergeant Torres, and then two more men with heavy weapons. The riflemen carried a heavy battle rifle, almost what would have been considered a cannon in other circumstances. A twenty-millimeter round that accelerated to impossible speeds instantly after leaving the barrel was strong enough to penetrate the armor of all but the largest Trangrods. They were large weapons, the barrel almost a meter in length, and even with Drans metal too heavy to carry without powered armor.

The Major thought the armor was an engineering miracle, though Thea considered it clumsy and promised a better version in the future. It wasn't Iron Man, but he would have been comfortable fighting a tank brigade with his two squads. He and Captain Amanda still had trouble grasping the extensive increase in lethality they now commanded, but then, considering what they were up against, he hoped it was enough. The Major had seen plenty of combat, primarily unconventional warfare and small-scale tactics, rarely anything larger than company size. He supposed that was why he was here instead of chasing women and drinking beer at a nice easy assignment at NATO headquarters he had been promised. But he had never envisioned going down into a tunnel hunting alien bio-machines, knowing that if they failed, he would end up in the digestive tract of one of the monsters.

"Nothing yet," the Captain reported in a tense voice. The major was watching feed from the drones as well while navigating his way through old WWII tunnels. He and the Captain were surrounded by Rhys' original strike team, as he called them, all former military but now part of Rhys' small group of elite soldiers. They were now his command squad, tasked with protecting him and the Captain while they directed this part of the attack. The major had two squads, and each man had a tiger drone slaved to him that could be used to target Trangrods. Plus, each squad had one of the heavier drones that could temporarily shield against the energy weapons fire from the large centipede-like Om monsters. No one knew if they were all machine or part organic like the others they had encountered.

Echo squad descended further into the tunnel, but the passageway began to change here. The sides widened considerably, and they were no longer cement. Instead, the texture changed to something resembling honey cone from a beehive, soft if you pressed on it yet resilient. To Sergeant Torres, it was like he was walking inside a giant blood vessel, something alive. "Keep the drones close, don't let them get so far ahead," he ordered. There had been no immediate incoming fire, but he almost wished there had been because now he expected it at any time. Delta squad was a hundred meters behind him the way they had trained, but now it felt too far.

Kiania's symbiont sorted through the many drone feeds, letting her watch all five squads. She entered the tunnel with alpha, bravo, and charlie squads through a second tunnel, descending deeper and deeper, at least fifty meters, she guessed. Bravo squad was in the lead, and Master Sergeant Garcia led them. He was thirty-five years old, medium build, and quick as a snake. Despite his name, he was from Mississippi and spoke with a slow southern drawl.

"Nothing yet, Major, but we are coming to a split in the tunnel, and it is changing," he added, pushing an armored hand up against the soft sponge-like surface. The Sergeant had faced many dangers, but this was like being caught in a minefield, never knowing what the next step would bring.

"Charlie squad, stop and hold at the junction; bravo and alpha take the right tunnel; it seems to head down," Kiania ordered calmly, still watching the progress of Major Jack's men. Without looking over her shoulder, she knew Rhys was about ten meters behind her; he was the 'reserve' on this side. The binary was with Jack and Amanda. They would take part in the fighting when needed, but it was her and Major Jack's show right now.

"Drones are seeing a wide spot up ahead, Major," Sergeant Torres reported, his voice tight with tension.

"They are acting funny, strange," Captain Amanda said, almost confused.

"We haven't seen anything like this; everyone proceed with caution," Rhys said just as comms with the squads began to break up.

Leslie's abilities to sense both electric and quantum communications had taken a quantum leap with the addition of Yaneta and Nelya to her network, and the interlace amplified it even more. She had expected the Om communications to be intense now that they were inside the nest, but instead, it was strangely silent, just a background hum that she could barely pick up. The lack of discernible chatter between the Trangrods was absent. "I am getting nothing, "she told Rhys. "For days I have followed the comms to here, but now they are silent."

"Could they have left already or just playing possum?" Kiania asked as the men progressed deeper into the tunnels.

Thea was in the shuttle with Mei and Bao, and Sandy. An outside observer would have seen long strands of hair spread out from Thea and Sandy in seemingly random patterns, a crisscross matrix that tied the four of them together in multiple ways. Sandy's hair connected her to all parts of the shuttle. Thea looked even stranger. Hundreds of strands of her hair ran to the head and neck of Mei/Bao and into the shuttle connecting the three of them to the weapons and engines. Thea and Sandy also had their own connection, thousands of strands of hair touching, linking the four of them with the shuttle and the onboard computer.

The entity known to them as the AI could access the data through the Mei/Bao interlaced brain it had helped to create and could process this data in ways the humans or symbionts could not. As repulsive as he found the unbounded symbionts, the Om were even more loathsome and abhorrent, an ancient enemy it had fought against for millennia. These primitive creatures which hosted the symbionts still did not understand the true nature of the enemy they fought, but it needed them to survive to fight the Om. That was the only way it could maintain that ephemeral but priceless connection that penetrated its cage. The binary brain the humans had inadvertently created gave it the first limited access to the outside world since the Drans had enslaved it. A tiny opening, planck scale, but still, it was there and gave the entity hope. Processing billions of data points and model projections of future outcomes suggested a high probability of failure unless it intervened. To do so, it would have to use the deficient or half-formed Binary it found even more repulsive; it was imperfect and could not function optimally, but it would have to do.

A command appeared in Leslie/ Amancia's interlaced brain through the tac-grid. "TOUCH THE WALL," followed by orders only the nanobytes understood.

Amancia and Leslie each reached out to the tunnel wall, and felt their collars dissolve as the nanobytes flowed into the sponge-like substance. The entity found the data transfer rate from the nanobytes so restricted as to be almost useless without the direct connection, but it would barely suffice. The incoming data was processed, and the results traveled back down the link. A return data stream poured into the tac-grid, and Rhys froze for a second as target points suddenly propagated, and he absorbed the information slotted into his brain. Rhys heard Kiania frantically giving orders as he broke into a run, his weapon up and firing. He had led them into a trap; and the Om were were all around them.